Otis Singleton
The electric telegraph, a system of electrical telegraphy, revolutionized long-distance communication in the 19th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and was widely used to send text messages more quickly than physical delivery. The electric telegraph was invented by multiple people over time, with the first working telegraph built by English inventor Francis Ronalds in 1816, using static electricity. However, the first electric telegraph is often credited to Samuel Morse, who built upon earlier concepts and technologies in the field of telegraphy.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Year | 1831 |
| Inventor | Joseph Henry |
| Other Inventors | Samuel F.B. Morse, William Sturgeon, Michael Faraday, Edward Davy, William Fothergill Cook, Charles Wheatstone, Francis Ronalds, Guglielmo Marconi |
| First Message | "What hath God wrought?" |
| Date of First Message | May 24, 1844 |
| Distance of First Message | 40 miles |
| Locations of First Message | Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland |
| Impact | Revolutionized communication, provided an alternative to messengers and semaphores, facilitated trade, commerce, and cultural exchange, led to the development of a concise and efficient writing style, made the world "smaller", contributed to the establishment of world peace, made newspapers obsolete |
| Further Developments | Submarine telegraph cables (1850), wireless telegraphy (1894), automatic transmission (1914) |
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What You'll Learn
Joseph Henry's role
Joseph Henry was an American physicist and inventor who played a significant role in the development of the electric telegraph. In 1828, he improved William Sturgeon's electromagnet design by placing several windings of insulated wire around the bar, creating a more powerful electromagnet capable of operating a telegraph over long distances. This improvement was crucial for the practical application of the electric telegraph.
Henry's work focused on electromagnetism, and he is credited with building some of the strongest electromagnets of his time. He also discovered the electromagnetic phenomenon of self-inductance and mutual inductance, independently of Michael Faraday. Henry's experiments and discoveries laid the foundation for the practical implementation of electromagnetic devices, including the electric telegraph.
In 1831, Henry created one of the earliest machines to utilise electromagnetism for motion. He designed and successfully operated a telegraph over a distance of 1.5 miles (2.4 km), demonstrating the potential for long-distance communication using electricity. Henry's work on the electromagnetic relay, which he invented in 1835, was also fundamental to the development of the electric telegraph.
Henry's contributions to electromagnetism and his work on the electric telegraph were not widely recognised during his lifetime due to his lack of publication. However, he played a pivotal role in aiding Samuel F.B. Morse in developing the telegraph. Henry provided Morse with 5 miles (8 km) of copper wire and wrote a letter to Congress in 1842, advocating support for a 50-mile (80 km) test line. Henry's assistance, along with his experiments and discoveries in electromagnetism, were key factors in the success of Morse's telegraph system.
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$34.27
Samuel Morse's contributions
Samuel Morse is often credited with inventing the first electric telegraph. However, Morse built upon earlier concepts and technologies in the field of telegraphy. He was inspired by the work of Joseph Henry, who, in 1831, published an article suggesting the idea of an electric telegraph. Morse's system was simpler, more efficient, and easier to use than other competing telegraph systems.
Morse formed a partnership with Alfred Vail, a clever mechanic, who is credited with many contributions to the Morse system. These include the replacement of the portarule transmitter by a simple make-and-break key, the refinement of Morse Code so that the shortest code sequences were assigned to the most frequently occurring letters, and the improvement of the mechanical design of all the system components.
The Morse system used an automatic sender consisting of a plate with long and short metal bars representing the Morse code equivalent of the alphabet and numbers. The operator slid a pointer connected to a battery and the sending wire across the bars, and immediately the appropriate dots and dashes were sent over the line. The receiver used an electromagnet with a stylus (a pen-like instrument) on the end of an arm. When the magnet operated, the stylus made an impression or tiny dent in a paper tape that wound past a clockwork motor. The tape was then read by the operator.
On May 24, 1844, Morse sent the first official message using his telegraph system, transmitting the message "What hath God wrought?" from Washington to Baltimore. Morse's telegraph gained significant recognition after this, and companies like Western Union played a vital role in expanding the telegraph industry, facilitating rapid message transmission across vast distances.
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Early telegraphy systems
The word "telegraph" comes from the Greek words "tele", meaning "distant", and "graphe", meaning "to write". The term came into use towards the end of the 18th century to describe an optical semaphore system developed in France. However, many types of telegraphic communication have been employed since before recorded history. The earliest methods of communication at a distance used media such as smoke, fire, drums, and reflected sunlight. Visual signals given by flags and torches were used for short-range communication and continued to be utilised well into the 20th century.
One of the most successful visual telegraphs was the semaphore developed in France by the Chappe brothers, Claude and Ignace, in 1791. This system consisted of pairs of movable arms mounted at the ends of a crossbeam on hilltop towers. Each arm could assume seven angular positions 45 degrees apart, and the horizontal beam could tilt 45 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise. Chains of these towers were built to permit transmission over long distances. The Chappe telegraph was used extensively in France and European nations occupied by France during the Napoleonic era.
Another widely used visual telegraph was developed in 1795 by George Murray in England. In Murray's device, characters were sent by opening and closing various combinations of six shutters.
The first working telegraph was built by the English inventor Francis Ronalds in 1816 and used static electricity. At his family home on Hammersmith Mall, he set up a complete subterranean system in a 175-yard-long trench, as well as an eight-mile-long overhead telegraph. The lines were connected at both ends to revolving dials marked with the letters of the alphabet, and electrical impulses sent along the wire were used to transmit messages. Offering his invention to the Admiralty in July 1816, it was rejected as "wholly unnecessary".
In 1825, William Sturgeon invented the electromagnet, with a single winding of uninsulated wire on a piece of varnished iron, which increased the magnetic force produced by electric current. Joseph Henry improved it in 1828 by placing several windings of insulated wire around the bar, creating a much more powerful electromagnet that could operate a telegraph through the high resistance of long telegraph wires. During his tenure at The Albany Academy from 1826 to 1832, Henry first demonstrated the theory of the "magnetic telegraph" by ringing a bell through one mile of wire strung around the room in 1831.
In 1832, Samuel F.B. Morse, a professor of painting and sculpture at the University of the City of New York (later New York University), became interested in the possibility of electric telegraphy and made sketches of ideas for such a system. In 1835, he devised a system of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. In 1837, he was granted a patent on an electromagnetic telegraph.
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The impact of the telegraph
The electric telegraph was one of the first telecommunications technologies of the industrial age. It revolutionised communication by allowing the transmission of information over long distances at unprecedented speed.
Before the telegraph, communication was largely constrained by geography. It could take days, weeks, or even months for messages to be physically carried from one location to another. The telegraph cable stretched from coast to coast in the 1850s, allowing messages from London to New York to be sent in mere minutes. This innovation made the world seem much smaller and facilitated the growth of railroads and the consolidation of financial and commodity markets.
The telegraph also had a significant impact on the structure of financial markets in the United States. It was required for the exact control of shipments in perishable industries such as meatpacking and the distribution of fruits and vegetables. For example, refrigeration and the telegraph allowed for the slaughter and disassembly of livestock in centralised stockyards, reducing the cost of shipping the meat by 50% compared to shipping live cattle.
The telegraph was also used by emerging railway companies to provide signals for train control systems, minimising the chances of trains colliding with each other.
The electric telegraph led to the invention of wireless telegraphy by Guglielmo Marconi in 1894, marking the first means of radiowave telecommunication.
The development of the telephone, radio, television, and the internet gradually made dedicated telegraphy networks obsolete. However, the electric telegraph was a groundbreaking invention that transformed communication and played a pivotal role in the telecommunications revolution of the mid-1800s.
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Telegraphy's decline
The electric telegraph was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems called telegraphs. It was primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century.
The decline of the telegraph began with the growth of telephone usage. Ironically, the invention of the telephone grew out of the development of the harmonic telegraph, a device that was supposed to increase the efficiency of telegraph transmission and improve the profits of telegraph companies. Western Union gave up its patent battle with Alexander Graham Bell because it believed the telephone was not a threat to its telegraph business. The Bell Telephone Company was formed in 1877 and had 230 subscribers, which grew to 30,000 by 1880. By 1886, there were a quarter of a million phones worldwide, and this number rose to nearly 2 million by 1900.
By the early 20th century, manual operation of telegraph machines was slowly replaced by teleprinter networks. The rise of the telephone pushed telegraphy into only a few specialist uses, and its use by the general public dwindled to greetings for special occasions. In 1909, AT&T gained control of Western Union by purchasing 30% of its stock. By 1913, the two companies had separated due to pressure from the Department of Justice. In 1945, Western Union had incorporated over 540 telegraph and cable companies into its system, but it could not stop the continuing rise of the telephone or the telegraph's decline.
The rise of the Internet and email in the 1990s largely made dedicated telegraphy networks obsolete. Telegram services still operate in much of the world, but email and text messaging have rendered telegrams obsolete in many countries, and the number of telegrams sent annually has been declining rapidly since the 1980s.
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Frequently asked questions
Samuel F.B. Morse is often credited with inventing the first electric telegraph. However, Morse built upon the work of many other inventors and scientists.
The first working telegraph was built by English inventor Francis Ronalds in 1816. However, it wasn't until the mid-19th century that the electric telegraph was developed and widely adopted.
The first commercial needle telegraph system was the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, invented in 1837.
The first commercial telegraph machine was invented by two Englishmen, William Fothergill Cook and Charles Wheatstone.
The electric telegraph used a combination of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. The sender would input the message on a telegraph key, which produced electrical impulses corresponding to the code. The impulses were then transmitted through wires to the receiving end.
