The transfer of communication across large pieces of land before the introduction of the telegraph was largely limited due to weather and the lack of efficient receptor points. Messages largely had to be hand-delivered or signaled through ancient means such as drum beats or smoke signals. Semaphores, a long series of stations atop mountains that had used large wings to signal messages was also widely used. However, this still proved inefficient in the face of unforgiving weather and anything that could prohibit how well the stations could be seen. There needed to be an efficient and trustworthy source of communication across large pieces of land.
Inventors from all over the globe competed to find a remedy for this problem. In 1794, the non-electric telegraph was created by Claude Chappe, using a semaphore system that consisted of a flag-based alphabet to communicate across long distances. This is most commonly referred to as the optical telegraph. Later, in 1809, Samuel Soemmering created an early type of the telegraph that relied on the process of electrolysis to communicate a message 2,000 feet away through the production of gas that was produced by gold electrodes and thirty-five wires in water. Despite these inventions and their progress, they each quickly proved to be inconsistent and limited in their range. However, in 1825, William Sturgeon, a British inventor created the electromagnet, an invention that would soon prove to be revolutionary in the world of communication.
William Sturgeon and his electromagnet
By the 1830s, Samuel Morse and Vail created Morse Code, a coded system that they used to communicate letters and numbers across telegraph wires through a set of short marks and long marks. The idea originally occurred to Morse while he was teaching art and design at New York University. In the class, he made a marker write codes on a paper by sending out electric pulses to activate an electromagnet. In Morse Code, the length of the marks were determined by how often certain letters were typically used. For example, the frequently used letter “A” received a short mark while the more infrequently used letter “Z” received a much longer mark.
Morse Code
Later, Morse and Vail improved the electric telegraph to mark papers with a variation of dashes and dots. This was later shown in 1838 at a public demonstration that furthered the public’s support for its widespread use. This support grew and grew until Congress finally agreed to build a forty mile telegraph line connecting Washington to Baltimore. Upon the line’s creation six years later, Congress experienced the first official telegraph message (“What hath God wrought?”) be sent from the US Supreme Court chamber to an affiliate in Baltimore, Maryland. This officially began the revolution of the telegraph (May 24, 1844).
Map of the Transatlantic Cable
Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/telegraph
thoughtco.com/the-history-of-the-electric-telegraph-and-telegraphy-1992542
https://sciencing.com/cons-telegraph-8246524.html
https://www.britannica.com/technology/telegraph/Development-of-the-telegraph-industry
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