The Telegraph: Morse-ophisticated than you think!
- Paul Campbell
- Feb 18
- 11 min read
Updated: Mar 5
When one is asked to name the most important inventions since the beginning of creation, the wheel is certainly at the top of the list, the steam locomotive, combustion engine, internet, printing press, and many others all compete for positions of their own. While the exact ranking may be hotly debated by people with nothing better to do, it is widely agreed that a close second must be Johannes Gutenberg's printing press. The printing press revolutionized written communication and made literature accessible to the common man (and woman). Equally revolutionary was the telegraph. The telegraph marks the halfway point between the printing press and the modern internet. Like the locomotive opened the door to long-distance travel for the automobile, the telegraph opened to door to long-distance communication for the telephone and the internet.
More than just a machine
While the telegraph machine itself was important, it was hardly complex or revolutionary by the mid 19th century. People had been experimenting with electricity and magnetism since before the Revolutionary War and Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment. Telegraphs, by definition, have existed the entirety of human history. The word 'tele-graph' simply means 'long-distance writing.' It applies to everything from smoke signals to semaphore signals to heliographs, which use reflected sunlight. But, like the telephone and the television, the word has become synonymous with one specific kind of machine.
This type of machine is more accurately termed an electrical telegraph. By the start of the 19th century, electric telegraphs were nothing remarkable. Though they were not yet in commercial use, prototypes had been developed as early as the 1750's. Many of these early devices used multiple wires, often a single wire for each letter of the alphabet, and occasionally more to represent numerals. While they demonstrated the potential for sending electronic messages, they were hardly practical, and most could only go a few hundred feet because of the electrical resistance in long lengths of wire. That was about to change.
Electronic communication became far easier with the discovery of the electromagnet in 1825 by William Sturgeon. The concept was improved by Joseph Henry in 1828, and electronic signals were sent beyond a mile of wire for the first time. As electric batteries became more stable and more common, electrical testing increased. Yes, though it seems odd to imagine in the middle of the 19th century, electric telegraphs required electricity. This was most often provided by batteries or coal-powered electric generators.
Ten years later, Edward Davy patented the first printing telegraph. This clever design ensured that the message would be recorded even in the absence of an operator. Operators could then go home at the end of the day and collect any messages that had been received during the night on the following day. As operators became more familiar with Morse code, many companies realized that the operators could translate the messages faster simply by hearing the electric buzzing. Louder tones were implemented, and operators began copying down messages as they came, but the original written record remained in use even after the audible system became common, for audible signals could not be recorded as written messages could.
While Samuel Morse is often credited with the invention of the telegraph—and Morse did invent one type of recording telegraph machine along with his assistant, Alfred Vail—the reality is not so simple. By 1838, when Morse presented his idea to Congress in request of government funding, sixty-two patents already existed for one kind of telegraph machine or another. The city of Munich, Germany, already had a city-wide telegraph system in place, created by Carl Steinheil. In England, William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone had patented a telegraph that used a combination of five needles to indicate any of 20 of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Additional needles could be added to achieve all 26 letters, plus numerals, but 5 became the standard number.
When compared to other machines of the 19th century, including taximeters, automated textile machines, steam locomotives, and mechanical computation machines, the early telegraph was hardly complex or remarkable. The innovation of the telegraph was not solely in the machine, but the entire combination of parts that were essential to the whole, and this is where Morse's invention succeeded.
The first Binary Code
Each part of the telegraph was critical for its success. Not only the sending and receiving mechanisms, but the language of messages and the infrastructure to ensure consistent and continuous communication across vast distances. Telegraph inventors solved this problem in two basic ways.
The first, which the Cooke and Wheatstone system implemented in England, was to create a more complex machine that could interpret the signals into letters. Their five-needle system, and later their A-B-C system, made messaging simple. Their operators were not required to learn a code which must be translated. Unfortunately, their early machines were incompatible with recording devices, and they required an operator's presence and constant vigilance to observe and copy down each letter.
Samuel Morse realized that such constant observance was impractical. He devised a code to ensure that messages could be sent quickly and efficiently without needing an operator on the opposite end at all times. Morse code was simple enough for the average man to learn fairly quickly. His adaptation of recording devices to use paper and a stylus rather than more complex chemicals, as other recording devices did, made the receiving of messages both reliable and automatic.
For commercial use, Morse's system won out, though several variations of his original code were used, as they became adapted for international use. The telegraph spread like wildfire. Morse sent the first long-distance message from Washington D.C. to his assistant, Vail in Baltimore, Maryland. The first long-distance message sent by binary code was on the 24th of May, 1844, and was, appropriately, from the book of Numbers: “What hath God wrought!”
One year later, Morse opened the first commercial telegraphic company, called the Magnetic Telegraph Company. The following year, 1846, Cooke created the Electric Telegraph Company in England in partnership with John Ricardo, using the machines he patented alongside his partner, Wheatstone. Over the next fifteen years, the telegraph became the fastest growing industry in the world. By 1860, the Electric Telegraph Company had spread across England, and the Magnetic Telegraph Company had spread across the eastern US, but it was not the largest telegraph company in America any longer. Multiple telegraph companies vied for position, not only in America and England, but in other countries as well. Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France were developing their own telegraphic communication systems. By 1860, the Western Union Telegraph Company had come to dominate the transferring of telegrams (As an aside, the telegraph is the mechanism for sending messages, and the telegram is the message itself).
Western Union would continue to be the largest American Telegraph company until the end of the era, buying out competitors and expanding its services not only to communication but electronic money transfers. In fact, Western Union telegraphs survived even into the age of internet. You could still send a telegram through Western Union as recently as 2006! However, it was their invention of money transfers that proved their most enduring service. In the 19th century, the idea of sending money through an electric wire was certainly a novelty, but the idea of 'wiring' money soon caught on, and the name stuck.
By 1860, telegraph offices could be found in every major city in England and the eastern US. The railroad provided perfect routes for telegraph wires to follow, and everywhere the railroad went, the telegraph soon followed. Railroads were dotted with telegraph poles long before electric companies adopted the same means of conveying power. To demonstrate just how quickly telegraphs overtook the world, we need only look at the rise and fall of the Pony Express. It was in 1860 that the Pony Express was first created to carry messages from the end of the telegraph lines in St. Joseph, Missouri to the west. Though California and some of the surrounding states had telegraph stations of their own, railroads had not yet connected the east and west coast, and neither had telegraph lines. By the end of 1861, less than two years after the start of the Pony Express, the company closed its doors, as Western Union established the first trans-continental telegraph line, linking forever the east and west coasts by rapid and reliable communication.
The Worldwide Web
Part of the reason why the telegraph expanded so rapidly was that companies recognized that the value of the product they offered relied so heavily on the reach they had. A telegraph, like the first one sent by Morse from Washington D.C. to Maryland, would be faster than a post letter, without doubt, but the difference in speed was usually negligible. A telegraph from Washington D.C. to Maryland would arrive the same day, rather than the day after, but it could be far more costly. A letter from New York to California, however, might take a week or more, but a telegraph would arrive within minutes. Telegraph companies recognized that the value of their product was directly proportional to the distance they could reach, and greater and greater efforts were made to extend the distance, even across continents and oceans.
The first attempt at a trans-Atlantic cable began in 1854 and was completed in 1858, connecting the vast telegraph network of the eastern side of America with the equally vast network in Britain. Oddly enough, the telegraph spanned the Atlantic even before it spanned America. The success of the first trans-Atlantic cable was short-lived, however. Signal quality became increasingly poor, and the cable was beyond use after only three weeks.
This taste of the future, proving that it could be done, only increased efforts. A second attempt was made with a better quality cable, a larger ship, and much-improved gear for the laying down of the cable. Despite the difficulties and setbacks, the first attempt had provided valuable experience. The Great Eastern, a massive ship that could carry the over 2,500 miles of cable, left Ireland bound for Canada. Nearly halfway, the second cable snapped, and though the ship was outfitted with grappling hooks designed for the event of a lost cable, weather prevented the ship from being able to retrieve it.
Great Eastern returned to England. A third cable was manufactured—all 2,500 miles of it—and Great Eastern set out once more with plans to lay another cable and to retrieve, if possible, the end of the broken line. This final attempt was a success. The summer of 1866 saw the first reliable line connecting Europe and America. With this achievement, hope was renewed for finding the earlier cable, and Great Eastern returned to find the lost cable. It took two weeks of searching and grappling to finally get the cable back aboard the ship.
If you have ever tried snagging a prize from a claw machine, you can only imagine the difficulty of trying to snag a cable buried under two and a half miles of water, especially without the ease of modern sonar equipment or robotic submarines and machinery. The success was celebrated with fireworks. On September 7th, the second functioning cable was connected in Newfoundland, Canada.
The new methods developed for the second and third cables greatly improved the speed of messages which had ultimately proved the failure of the first line. While a letter by steamship took twelve days (in good weather) to cross the Atlantic, the trans-Atlantic telegraph could send messages at eight words per minute! While this makes dial-up internet seem lightning-fast by comparison, this was a huge improvement over ordinary post letters. “From two weeks to two minutes” the slogan ran, and there was no going back.
This incredible leap forward in worldwide communications only inspired greater expansion. By 1871, even Australia was connected via telegraph cables via Singapore. By 1893, when the Callahan Chronicles take place, one could send a telegram practically anywhere in the civilized world. Britain remained the powerhouse of intercontinental communication. They were the first to cross the Atlantic, and their experience was unmatched. It was Britain who had developed and who owned and operated the majority of repair equipment for undersea lines. Britain had the most expertise not only with laying the lines but in grappling them and retrieving them for the occasional repair. The British Empire also controlled the prominent areas where gutta-percha trees were grown.
What on earth is gutta-percha? Before the invention of plastic, materials that were flexible, durable, and non-conductive were few and far between. While similar to—but far less known than—India's rubber trees, gutta-percha trees produce a natural latex that can be molded like plastic and formed into durable shapes before hardening. It was often used for jewelry, canes, soles of shoes, and countless other household products, just as rubber and plastic are used today. One notable difference between rubber and gutta-percha, though, is that gutta-percha does not degrade in salt water. It was the perfect material to protect the copper telegraph wires over the many miles of ocean floor. At about 260 pounds per nautical mile, large quantities of gutta-percha became absolutely necessary for trans-ocean cables. Most of it came from Australia, Thailand, and Java.
The 'All Red Line' was Britain's network of telegraph cables that circled the globe. Plans to lay a trans-Pacific cable began as early as 1887. A Pacific Cable Committee was formed in 1896 with members from Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The All Red Line was not completed until 1911, when the last section of the trans-Pacific cable was laid between Fanning Island and British Columbia, in Canada, completing the circle from Australia back to America's west coast.
Telegraphs Today
While we may think of telegraphs as a relic of the past, such is not the case. The entire internet as we know it relies on the same (though much improved) system of binary code transferred globally through cables. Machines became more complex, and copper was replaced with fiber optics, but the system is largely the same. In 1855, David Hughes patented a printing telegraph that could translate the code into ordinary letters and still record the messages. The 1870's began to see widespread use of the teleprinter and, in the following decades, the fully automated teletypewriter, which coupled the innovation of the typewriter with that of the telegraph, greatly increasing speed of incoming and outgoing messages while also reducing operator errors.
Another breakthrough came with the discovery of frequencies. Thomas Edison patented a quadruplex telegraph which could sent up to four messages at the same time using differing frequencies. This greatly increased the speed of communication, but it also opened the door for the death of the telegraph as we know it. Another inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, realized that if wires could transmit differing frequencies, they could be used to transmit audio frequencies as well—so long as a device could change audible frequencies into electronic ones, and then back to audible tones. In 1874, the telephone was invented. It did not explode in popularity as quickly as the telegraph, but it was the next step.
Interestingly enough, the fax machine—another child of the telegraph—has existed longer than the telephone. The first image sent via electronic signals happened all the way back in 1843, some thirty years before the telephone's invention! A similar machine, called the telautograph, was invented in 1888 by Elisha Gray, allowing users to send their signatures over long distances, making international business far easier, though it never saw widespread use. It would not be until 80 years later that true fax machines as we know them would become common. Now, nearly forty years after that, the fax machine itself is a relic of the past.
Though quicker communication was the ultimate goal of the telegraph, its greatest contribution was in the method of delivery. The telephone, television, radio, and internet all rely on the ability to send coded information through electronic pathways. This blog, itself, is nothing more than an incredibly refined telegram which my computer automatically translates into electronic signals—words, images, and all—into dots and dashes, zeroes and ones, and then which your cellphone or computer then translates back into English words and images. Copper cables became fiber optic, and human translators were replaced by machines, but in the end, its all dots and dashes.
It doesn't get Morse-simple than that.
These blogs are designed to give you a brief look at the true history which plays a part in my novels, The Callahan Chronicles.
For more information on telegraphs or the Callahan Chronicles, check out these links:
The Callahan Chronicles - by Paul Campbell
Gray Matter - buy on Amazon
A History of the Telephone - Library of Congress
The Development of the Telegraph - Elon University
The First Trans-Atlantic Cable - by Becky Little
The First Fax Machines - by Allan Bellows
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