The Victorian Internet tells the history of the invention of the telegraph. The story covers the early use of the optical telegraph, the creation of the electric telegraph, and how the new technology reshaped society and industry.
The Notes
- The telegraph was called the “highway of thought.”
- Prior to the telegraph, messages and news traveled no faster than horseback — no more than 100 miles per day.
- The early belief surrounding the telegraph was it would bring countries closer together and create a lasting world peace.
- Optical Telegraph
- Invented by Claude and Rene Chappe in France.
- The first message was sent on March 2, 1791, over a 10-mile distance from Brulon to Parce, France.
- The device was made of wooden panels, five feet tall. Each panel was painted black on one side, white on the other. The panels could be flipped to transmit a number over long distances.
- The downside of the optical telegraph was that it required a direct line of sight to transmit messages. It was unusable at night, in heavy fog, or other bad weather.
- Miot de Melito suggested it be named telegraphe.
- Chappe’s second design used a rotating bar, with rotating arms at each end. The arms could be moved at 45-degree increments. The design allowed for 98 combinations representing numbers, letters, and syllables.
- The French government saw the military potential and successfully tested the new design on July 12, 1793.
- The Paris-Lille line of the French State Telegraph began operation in May 1794. It reported a recapturing of a town from the Austrians/Prussians an hour of the battle’s end.
- The Lille line was extended to Dunkirk and a second line was built to Strasbourg in 1798.
- Napoleon Bonaparte extended the network from Paris to Milan in 1804.
- Chappe suggested a business use for his network that relayed commodity prices and news bulletins between Paris, Amsterdam, Cadiz, and London.
- Britain created their own version in 1795 designed by George Murray. The design included six shutters that opened/closed for 64 possible combinations.
- “The capitals of distant nations might be united by chains of posts, and the settling of those disputes which at present take up months or years might then be accomplished in as many hours.” — Encyclopedia Britannica, 1797
- A network of almost 1,000 optical telegraphs covered most of Western Europe by the 1830s.
- Francois and Joseph Blanc, bankers, bribed optical telegraph operators in Tours in 1836 to add errors in messages to signal whether the Paris stock market was up or down that day to gain an informational edge on their competition. Their scheme went unnoticed for two years.
- Electric Telegraph
- A working electric telegraph was built in 1816 by Francis Ronalds in Britain but was rejected by the Admiralty as unnecessary: “Telegraphs of any kind are now wholly unnecessary. No other than the one now in use will be adopted.” — John Barrow, secretary of the Admiralty
- The biggest problem with electric telegraph inventions early on was the inability to send signals over long distances. The longer the wire, the weaker the signal.
- Joseph Henry solved the long-wire problem in 1829 and 1830, unbeknownst to telegraph inventors at the time. Henry was able to send a signal over 1,060 feet of wire. He used a small number of small batteries connected together rather than one large battery.
- In the early days of the electric telegraph, it was seen mostly as a novelty.
- Samuel F. B. Morse
- Born in 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
- Had a career as a painter, doing portraits.
- Became interested in the telegraph in 1832, at the age of 41, on a ship returning from Europe.
- Morse first focused on the signaling code using short and long bursts that became the dots and dashes of the Morse Code.
- Morse with the help of Professor Leonard Gale, at New York University, solved the long-wire problem.
- “After substituting the battery of twenty cups for that of a single cup, we sent a message through two hundred feet of conductors, then through 1,000 feet, and then through ten miles of wire arranged on wheels in my own lecture room in the New York University in the presence of friends.” — Leonard Gale
- Morse, Gail, and Alfred Vail teamed up to push the invention.
- Morse got initial funding from Congress for an experimental line from Washington, DC to Baltimore, along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad line, in 1842.
- John Kirk, appointed by Congress to watch Morse’s progress, came up with the idea to use the telegraph to send the Whig National Convention (held in Baltimore in 1844) nominees over the unfinished line outside Baltimore to Washington in 15 minutes and prove the invention’s worth.
- Morse inaugurated the completed line with the message: “What hath god wrought.” on May 24, 1844.
- Morse proposed to Congress to extend the line to New York but was denied. So he turned to private funding. He teamed with Amos Kendell, who proposed telegraph lines along major commercial routes out of New York. Morse and his team would get 50% of the stock of each telegraph company for the patent rights.
- The Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed in 1845, and lines were built to Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, and the Mississippi River.
- The link from New York to Philly was completed in January 1846. The fee was set at 25 cents for 10 words. It earned $100 in receipts in the first four days.
- Fought legal battles over patent rights and royalties in the 1850s. The Supreme Court upheld Morse’s patent in 1853.
- His telegraph machine became the standard in the U.S. and Europe (not Britain).
- Died on April 2, 1872, with an estate of $500,000.
- “Although the practical working of it had been demonstrated on a small scale, the invention seemed altogether too chimerical to be likely ever to prove of any worth. Again and again he was pronounced a visionary, and his scheme stigmatized as ridiculous.” — obituary, NY Times, 1872
- William Fothergill Cooke
- Born in Britain, became interested in the telegraph in 1936.
- Built his first prototype in 3 weeks but it failed with longer wires.
- Partnered with Professor Charles Wheatstone, who was familiar with Joseph Henry’s work and tested signals over long distances.
- The partners created a 5-needle telegraph, each needle moved left or right to point out a number or letter.
- Cooke believed his device could be used to send stock prices or send messages to families, in addition to government use.
- Cooke approached the railroad companies to fund his enterprise. They built the first telegraph link between Euston and Camden Town stations, about 1.25 miles apart, in 1837.
- Great Western Railway agreed to a 13-mile link between Paddington and West Drayton. Cooke extended this line to Slough, with his own money, on the condition that the telegraph would be available to the public.
- Views on the new telegraph turned on August 6, 1944, when it was used to announce the birth of Queen Victoria’s second son Alfred Ernest at Windsor. The Times spread the news within 40 minutes of the announcement.
- John Lewis Ricardo bought a share of the patent rights from Cooke and Wheatstone and set up the Electric Telegraph Company with Cooke in September 1845.
- Growth of the Telegraph:
- “No invention of modern times has extended its influence so rapidly as that of the electric telegraph. The spread of the telegraph is about as wonderful a thing as the noble invention itself.” — Scientific American, 1852
- The electric telegraph exploded by the 1850s.
- In the US: there were 40 miles of telegraph in 1846 (Baltimore to Washington). There were 2,000 miles by 1848, 12,000 miles by 1850, and 23,000 miles by 1852.
- The transcontinental telegraph line to California was completed in October 1861. Messages previously sent by Pony Express from Sacramento to Missouri, now were sent instantly across the US.
- There were 2,215 miles of telegraph in Britain by 1850.
- There were 1,493 miles of telegraph in Prussia by 1852.
- By 1852, Canada had 983 miles of telegraph, Austria had 1,053 miles, and operations existed in Tuscany, Saxony, Bavaria, Spain, Russia, Holland, Australia, Cuba, and Chile.
- France only had 750 miles of telegraph wire in 1852 due to its extensive optical telegraph network and reluctance to adapt to the new technology.
- Interconnection treaties connected countries, with the first signed in 1849 between Prussia and Austria.
- The Austro-German Telegraph Union was created in 1850 between Prussia, Saxony, Austria, and Bavaria. It also adopted the Morse telegraph system as a standard.
- A line across the English Channel was successfully laid and tested by John and Jacob Brett in 1851. The connection from London to Paris opened to the public in 1852.
- Transatlantic Telegraph
- “The Atlantic Telegraph—that instantaneous highway of thought between the Old and New Worlds.” — Scientific American, 1858
- Cyrus W. Field
- Made his fortune in the paper trade and retired at age 33.
- Was approached by Frederic N. Gisborne in 1854 looking for funding for a telegraph line across the Gulf of St. Lawrence connecting New York to St. Johns, Newfoundland.
- Field saw a bigger opportunity to extend the connection from Newfoundland to Europe via a raised seabed between Newfoundland and Ireland.
- Field set up the Atlantic Telegraph Company with John Brett and backed by the US and British governments.
- Construction began on the 2,500-mile line across the Atlantic in 1857.
- Dr. Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse, appointed the company’s official electrician to design the system, turned out to be incompetent. He designed the cable wrong. The cable snapped multiple times, delayed the project, and when it was finally connected on August 5, 1858 and despite the celebration of achievement, it was unreliable. Whitehouse was blamed for its failure.
- “The official opening of the cable to public traffic was delayed again and again, and commercial messages started to pile up at both ends, while the true state of affairs was kept under wraps. The reliability of the cable steadily deteriorated, and it eventually stopped working altogether on September 1, less than a month after its completion.”
- A new cable was laid following Professor William Thomson’s recommendations and completed in the summer of 1866. A second telegraph line was linked the following year.
- The new cable earned £1,000 on its first day of operation. It generated enough revenue to pay off all of Field’s debts by 1867.
- Transatlantic telegrams originally cost about £20. Lower prices led to more profitability due to higher volume.
- “The demands for the telegraph have been constantly increasing; they have been spread over every civilized country in the world, and have become, by usage, absolutely necessary for the well-being of society.” – NY Times, 1872
- France connected to Newfoundland in 1869, links were established with India, Hong Kong, China, and Japan in 1870, Australia in 1871, and South America in 1874.
- By 1874: “there were over 650,000 miles of wire, 30,000 miles of submarine cable, and 20,000 towns and villages were on-line—and messages could be telegraphed from London to Bombay and back in as little as four minutes.”
- “There can be no doubt that the most popular outlet now for commercial enterprise is to be found in the construction of submarine lines of telegraph.” — Times of London, 1869.
- By 1880: over 100,000 miles of underwater cables existed.
- Britain built its own private network spanning the British Empire to avoid spying.
- Pneumatic Tube System
- The massive success of the telegraph led to excessive volume, congestion, and message delays because most messages were passed through one or more intermediary telegraph offices before arriving at their final destination. Each intermediary office retransmitted each message to the next office in the chain.
- The main source of congestion in London in the 1850s was messages tied to the Stock Exchange (half the messages) or business-related (one-third of the messages). The busiest link in the entire telegraph network was between the Stock Exchange and the Central Telegraph Office. The 220-yard link carried more messages than the rest of the network combined. The solution was a pneumatic tube system installed in 1854 that carried messages from the Stock Exchange to the telegraph office.
- Tube systems were added in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester by 1865. Berlin and Paris added tube systems by 1866, along with Vienna, Prague, Munich, Rio, Dublin, Rome, Naples, Milan, Marseilles, and New York.
- Paris built the most extensive tube network that allowed local messages to bypass the telegraph entirely. It allowed long messages to be sent as easily as short messages. The cost to send was fixed and cheaper than a telegram.
- “It is a well-known fact that no other section of the population avail themselves more readily and speedily of the latest triumphs of science than the criminal class. The educated criminal skims the cream from every new invention, if he can make use of it.” — Inspector John Bonfield quoted in the Chicago Herald, 1888
- Informational advantage around horse races was attempted. Race results were sent by coded message in an attempt to place bets before bookmakers got the results of a race.
- Coded messages were banned in most of Europe, except by governments, until 1865 with the formation of the International Telegraph Union. The Internation Telegraph Union, became the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) and regulates modem protocols used today.
- Coded messages in the U.S. were not banned and used as early as 1845.
- Coded messages led to shorter messages and a race between coders and telegraph companies to set rules to maintain revenues, since the cost of a message was tied to its length.
- Early electric telegraph operators created their own jargon and abbreviations to shorten messages much like early message boards or texting today.
- Each operator had their own two-letter signature to identify themselves.
- Female operators accounted for about 33% of all operators by the 1870s.
- The best operators could handle up to 40 words/minute.
- European telegraph companies were publicly controlled. US companies were private.
- Automatic machines were invented and put into use in the 1870s. It reduced human error and allowed anyone to send a message without the need for a skilled operator. Automatic machines could send messages up to 400 words/minute.
- A duplex machine allowed messages to be sent in both directions over a single wire simultaneously in 1872.
- Thomas Edison invented the quadruplex — able to send four messages at once over one wire — in 1874. It allowed for four times the previous message volume and massive cost savings for telegraph companies.
- Impact on Industries:
- “There are doubts whether the telegraph has been so good a friend to the merchant as many have supposed. Now, reports of the principal markets of the world are published every day, and our customers are continually posted by telegram. Instead of making a few large shipments in a year, the merchant must keep up constant action, multiplying his business over and over again. He has to keep up constant intercourse with distant correspondents, knows in a few weeks the result of shipments which a few years ago would not have been known for months, orders the proceeds invested in commodities, the value of which is well understood, and which are again sold before their arrival. He is thus kept in continual excitement, without time for quiet and rest.” — W.E. Dodge, 1868
- “The fact is, the telegraph lives upon commerce. It is the nervous system of the commercial system. If you will sit down with me at my office for twenty minutes, I will show you what the condition of business is at any given time in any locality in the United States.” — William Orton, president of Western Union, 1870
- Britain’s telegraph company allowed companies and people to reserve a telegraphic address to replace postal addresses to make it easier to send messages. Over 35,000 telegraphic addresses were registered by 1889.
- Private leased wires were run from a telegraph office directly to a business office or between multiple business offices.
- Newspaper
- Newspapers often reported global news that was six weeks old or older before the telegraph.
- The telegraph ushered in predictions of the end of newspapers. It did the opposite. Newspapers were flush with “news.”
- Big events were reported on in installments, leading to multiple editions published throughout the day.
- Newspapers formed coops — reporter networks — to dispatch news. The New York Associated Press was the best-known formed in 1848.
- Paul Julius von Reuter
- Was a translator, translating news stories for different European papers.
- Created the Reuter network across Europe in the 1840s, which sent stock and bond prices to his headquarters by homing pigeon, then delivered to his subscribers.
- Moved to London in 1851 after the telegraph linked to France and sold his dispatches to rival newspapers.
- One of the few successful messages on the first transatlantic cable in 1858 was from Reuter requesting news from New York to sell as dispatches in Europe.
- “Newspapers were able for the first time to give at least the illusion of global coverage, providing a summary of all the significant events of the day, from all over the world, in a single edition. We take this for granted today, but at the time the idea of being able to keep up with world affairs, and feel part of an extended global community, was extraordinary.”
- It completely changed how newspapers reported on wars. Sensitive information, previously reported weeks after the fact, was reported that day. Forced governments to be stricter about what information was released.
- Stock Market
- To combat crime, the Electric Telegraph Company in Britain sent all stock price messages in code from London to Edinburgh. Bankers could access the prices for a fee.
- Stock Tickers
- Result of companies wanting updated prices more than once a day.
- Dr. S.S. Laws developed the “gold indicator” that showed changes in the gold price at the Gold Exchange on Wall Street. His newly formed company installed “indicators” in brokerage offices for a subscription fee in 1866 and delivered the minute-by-minute gold price.
- E.A. Callahan created an indicator in 1867 that printed the changes in prices for a number of stocks, also available for a fee.
- “The record of the chattering little machine can drive a man suddenly to the very verge of insanity with joy or despair. But if there be blame for that, it attaches to the American spirit of speculation and not to the ingenious mechanism which reads and registers the beating of the financial pulse.” — newspaper reporter
- “The letters and figures used in the language of the tape are very few, but they spell ruin in ninety-nine million ways.” — Boston businessman
- Thomas Edison
- At age 21, met with Dr. Laws to suggest improvements to his design and was hired to run the operation for $300/month.
- Started his own company after Laws and Callahan merged their companies to become the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company.
- Created a simplified stock ticker that needed only one wire and provided gold and sterling prices, at a lower price than Laws and Callahan.
- He sold his company to Laws and Callahan.
- General Marshall Lefferts, president of Gold and Stock Telegraph, funded Edison’s research in exchange for the right to use the inventions.
- Money earned from improving the stock ticker gave him the freedom to develop his more well-known inventions.
- Commodities
- Global commodity prices were known daily and improved the global trade of cotton, corn, metals, shipping prices, and insurance.
- Banks
- Banks used codes to “wire” money in an early form of commerce.
- Western Union
- Monopolized the US space by 1870. Handled 80% of the messages sent in 1880.
- Allowed its customers to send up to $100 to 100s of towns and transfer up to $6,000 between 15 major cities. Almost $2.5 million was “wired” in 1877.
- Was a franchise business with the railroads as the franchisees.
- Its telegraph service was discontinued on January 27, 2006.
- Telephone
- Harmonic Telegraph: “The idea of the harmonic telegraph was to use a series of reeds vibrating at different frequencies. Electrical signals produced by the reeds would be combined, sent down a telegraph wire, and then separated out again at the other end using an identical set of reeds, each of which would respond only to the signals generated by its counterpart.”
- Alexander Graham Bell
- While working on a harmonic telegraph, accidentally discovered that his device might be able to send more than the sound of a reed.
- He filed a patent for his new invention on February 14, 1876, granted the patent on March 3, and successfully transmitted speech a week later.
- The Bell Telephone Company was formed in May 1877.
- “No skilled operator is required; direct conversation may be had by speech without the intervention of a third person. The communication is much more rapid, the average number of words being transmitted by Morse Sounder being from fifteen to twenty per minute, by Telephone from one to two hundred. No expense is required either for its operation, maintenance, or repair. It needs no battery and has no complicated machinery. It is unsurpassed for economy and simplicity.” — Bell Telephone advertisement
- 230 phones were in use in June 1877, 750 in July 1877, 1,300 in August 1877, and 30,000 by 1880.
- “So much have times altered in the last fifty years that the electric telegraph itself is threatened in its turn with serious rivalry at the hands of a youthful and vigourous competitor. A great future is doubtless in store for the telephone.” — Chambers Journal, 1885
- Over 250,000 phones were in use by 1886 and 2 million by 1900. One in ten U.S. homes had a phone by 1901.