Telegraph Service in 1800s United States by Zina Abbott

Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message.

Although there were optical forms of telegraphy used starting in the late 1700s, the first use of of telegraphy, as we know it today, began in the mid-19th century.

Early Cooke and Wheatstone double-needle railway

Telegraphy was first taken up in Britain in the form of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, which used five magnetic needles that could be pointed around a panel of letters and numbers by using an electric current. Initially, it was used primarily to aid railway signaling. A different system, developed in the United States by Samuel Morse, soon followed.

Samuel Morse was born in Massachusetts and educated at Yale University. After learning about electromagnetism during a voyage from Europe to the United States, he later learned more from American physicist, Joseph Henry. He collaborated with Gale and Vail, Morse to produce a single-circuit telegraph that worked by pushing the operator key down to complete the electric circuit of the battery. This action sent the electric signal across a wire to a receiver at the other end. All the system needed was a key, a battery, wire, and a receiver.

Samuel Morse also developed a code for universal telegraphy communication.

Western Union became the giant in telegraph communication. In the following is a timeline of telegraph development, although a few other telegraph companies are mentioned, much of it follows the progress made by Western Union.

A Morse key c. 1900

1843 – Morse and Vail received funding from the U.S. Congress to set up and test their telegraph system between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland.

1844 – On May 24, 1844, Morse sent Vail the historic first message: “What hath God wrought!” From there, aided by continuing innovations, the telegraph system spread across America and the world.

1851 – Western Union was initially founded as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York. The company changed its name to the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1856 after merging with several other telegraph companies.

1856 – The Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York. The company changed its name to the Western Union Telegraph Company after merging with several other telegraph companies.

1857 – Western Union participated in the 'Treaty of Six Nations', an attempt by six of the largest telegraph firms to create a system of regional telegraphy monopolies with a shared network of main lines.

1865 – Morse Code was adopted internationally.      

1860 – Western Union expanded through purchasing smaller companies until its lines ranged from the Mississippi River to the Ohio River.

 

Distributing poles for First Transcontinental Telegraph

1861 – Western Union had completed the first transcontinental telegraph line, which connected the Union from the West Coast to the East Coast. The first telegram was sent to President Abraham Lincoln. This provided rapid communication during the Civil War. Western Union had laid enough wire to become the first international telegraph company.

1866 – Western Union moved its headquarters from Rochester to New York City. It introduced stock tickers as a method to speed New York Stock Exchange quotes to brokerage firms.

Also in 1866, Western Union acquired the American Telegraph Company & the United States Telegraph Company, its two main competitors. For a time, this gave the company a virtual monopoly over the American telegraphy industry.

1867 – While pursuing its goal of connecting North America to Europe by Telegraph, Western Union also sponsored an expedition to survey a route across Russian-owned Alaska and Siberia. As a result of their negotiating for land rights with the Russian government, Western Union helped broker the sale of Alaska to the United States on March 30, 1867.

1870 – Since prior to 1870 time was not yet standardized across the country, Western Union developed its own time service.

1871 - Starting in February, Western Union’s network grew exponentially, allowing customers to send money between New York, Chicago and Boston using the Western Union money transfer services.

1874 – Thomas Edison developed the Quadruplex system, which allowed for four messages to be transmitted simultaneously using the same wire.

 

1877 – The nation's tallest building was built by Western Union. It had a time ball at the top, which dropped at noon on a signal telegraphed from the United States Naval Observatory.

1879 – Western Union briefly dabbled in the telephone field when it attempted to launch a rival telephony system before settling a patent lawsuit with Bell. After it lost a legal battle with Bell Telephone in 1879, it ceased pursuing telephone technology and concentrated solely on telegraphy.

1881 – Financier Jay Gould orchestrated a merger of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company with Western Union. By doing so, he ended up with a controlling share of the merged company.

1883 – Overall, the public considered Western Union to oversee the most reliable regulation of time. In 1883, the official start of Standard Railway Time was signaled from the descent of the Western Union time ball.

1884 – Western Union gradually absorbed more than 500 telegraph companies throughout the nation, growing so much by 1884 that it was included in the original 11 stocks tracked in the first Dow-Jones Average. When the Dow Jones Railroad Average stock market index for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was created in 1884, Western Union was one of the original eleven companies to be included.

1893 telegram about astronomical event

1900 –a Western Union operated a million miles of telegraph lines and two international undersea cables.

 

In my recent book, Jocelyn’s Wedding Dilemma, one chapter in particular involves numerous exchanges of telegrams. This book is available for sale in ebook and paperback, plus it is also available at no additional cost with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. To find the book description and purchase options, please CLICKHERE

 

 

In next book, just barely announced, is Wyatt’s New Bride, is now on pre-order and will be released on September 26, 2024. To find the book description and purchase options, please CLICK HERE

 

 

 

Sources:

https://www.zippia.com/western-union-careers-11543/history/#

https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/telegraph

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy

 

So Far Away...Communicating Long Distance with Loved Ones Then and Now

Smoke signals: One way to send a message a long distance when you're short on time

For the next six months I will be separated from my daughter by almost four thousand miles, an ocean, and a six hour time difference. This got me thinking how recent this ease of communication has become and how much that one thing has changed in my lifetime.

The pain of separation is lessened by knowing two things: My daughter will have a great time, and I can talk to her almost anytime I want--for free, thanks to computers and smartphones. There are so many ways nowadays to keep in touch with far-flung loved ones, it makes my mind spin: email, Facebook, Skype, Messenger, and texting. Changes are coming so fast, probably a few new ones have been developed in the time it took me to type this sentence.  Not to mention via social media you can see what your loved ones are up whether they like it or not on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook to name a few.

On Tuesday night we put our daughter on a plane to London where she's going for a semester. At three in the morning I got a text from her informing us she'd landed. Okay, fair enough, we did tell her to let us know when she got there. But then at 4 a.m. I got another text. "I think I left all my money at home."
I rolled out of bed and sure enough found the envelope full of pound notes still in her room.

Then came a series of increasingly panicky texts from Heathrow. "I don't know where I'm supposed to go! I don't see the bus from school." My husband threw the covers over his head and said, "Let her figure it out."
With visions of my daughter falling victim to human trafficking or being persuaded to join a terrorist cell, I made my way down to the computer and went to the website for her college. I learned the buses left from the airport every two hours and sent her that information from my phone. There continued a number of texts, which I won't document, but the upshot is apparently there are no employees, information desks or security guards at Heathrow! Unbelievable! An airport that runs itself.

While I was trying to talk my daughter down from jumping in a taxi for a hundred dollar ride, I emailed a friend of mine who I knew would be up early doing yoga or meditating or something else that would be good for her. She had recently told me the story about her own twenty-something year old son and his plan to travel by himself to Thailand. To start off his journey he left his passport two states away. But because we live in modern times, they were able to get someone to send his passport overnight. So, off he goes passport in hand. Later when she was at work she got a text from him. "Mom, I'm in China. Where do I go from here?" By the way, did I mention her son is deaf? And alone.

Between clients at her office my friend frantically tried to access her son's itinerary which he had left at home. Searching through her emails, she was able to find his next travel step from China to Thailand and texted him the information.

Anyway, that morning she replied right away to my email with the following advice: "Take a sleeping pill and turn off your phone."

But, no, I didn't do that. I stuck to my cell phone and computer, sending emails to staff at Queen Mary University alerting them to the fact that one stressed-out American student was wandering around the airport. I also found a help number which I texted to my daughter. When I at last got a message from her that she found the bus and was on her way, I let out a big sigh of relief and forgot how annoyed I was with her over the leaving her money here thing. I also got an email from someone at her school telling me they'd found her.

Because my daughter had a friend leaving for London that night, I was able to message that friend via Facebook and arrange to give her my daughter's money to bring over. Crisis averted. My point here being, we have so many avenues in 2017 to cut through long distance complications without even leaving home. Now if these kids would have figured it out on their own or learned from their mistakes is another question.

Me (in the purple) and my roommate, London, 1980

It's easy to communicate now, but when I did my year abroad in Britain, it was a different story. It wasn't that long ago, but the only tools available to me back in 1980 were telephones and airmail. When I landed in Heathrow back in the dark ages, my parents would have no way of knowing I got there safe and sound until they got my postcard telling them so.

I had a blast that year, but now I think of my poor parents rarely hearing from me for an entire year, and as a parent myself now, I feel for them. The phones were hard to use and expensive. Besides having to work out the time difference and hoping someone was home to pick up, we had to continually feed coins into the phone in order to have a conversation.

 Mainly, we wrote letters to each other. Letters written by hand on thin blue airmail paper. If I had a problem--and believe me I had more than a few--I was on my own.

Cut back a hundred years to 1880. My great grandfather and his cousin left Evanston, IL to seek their fortune in the silver mines of Leadville, Co. I have a picture of the two men on their western adventure. I don't know much, except his cousin died while there, and my great grandfather brought his body back home. He stayed put in Evanston after that.

My great grandfather (seated) and his cousin, Colorado 1880

I can't imagine having to handle an emergency on that scale in 1880. On top of everything else, my great grandfather must have felt so isolated in a communication desert. Telephones weren't common yet, but they did have the telegraph. I imagine he sent a telegram to their families back home alerting them to the death of their relative. Maybe he wrote a long, detailed letter as well, which would travel with the speed of stagecoaches, trains and mail carriers.

America has had a postal service from almost the very beginning. The first postal system was a private enterprise, but the U.S. government bought it months after it's inception. The postage was due when the letter was received--by the recipient. They quickly figured out this wasn't the most efficient method, and in 1842 the first postage stamps were issued. The cost of sending a letter was three cents.

I was surprised to read that the first air mail delivery was in 1870, decades before the first airplanes. Over five hundreds pounds of mail was sent off attached to balloons. There is no record of any of these airmail letters reaching their correct destinations. It was an idea way ahead of its time and probably best left on someone's drawing table.

Hordes of people made their way to California during the gold rush. The expansion left many folks miles away from the reach of the railroad or stagecoach. The Pony Express was developed to tackle this problem. Riders could deliver mail to remote outposts, often having to travel through hostile Indian territories. I was almost as surprised to learn that the Pony Express only ran for 18 months as I was about the first airmail deliveries.

The big development in communication was the invention of the telegraph. The first message sent in 1844 by Professor Samuel F.B. Morse said, "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT."  Interesting first choice.

The telegraph brought on a revolution in communication. For the first time delivering news was not limited to how fast man or machine could move. Think of how this instant exchange of information over great distances was a game-changer.

But, still for the average person in their daily lives snail mail was the way they kept in touch. My thoughts go back to families that were separated by long distance for long periods of time, and I wonder how much information was lost--or how many people were lost to each other. I can't imagine the heartbreak of seeing loved ones go off for distant parts and not knowing if you'd hear from them again. My daughter can wake me up at 3 a.m. anytime to tell me she's safe. Do you have your own stories of separation in your family history?