With Christmas
around the corner, we tend mail Christmas cards, call old friends, and connect
with distant family. It wasn’t always easy to do that. By the time the 1900’s
rolled around, we managed to keep in better contact with our friends and family.
The telegraph changed the way we communicated and ultimately made it possible
for our instant communications today.
Telegraph comes
from the Greek words tele meaning far, and graphein meaning write. The
telegraph had been around for a long time, but is now defunct. Computers have
replaced it, but its history is rather interesting. It goes back quite a few
centuries, but really wasn’t used until it became an electrical system. Instead
we relied on smoke signals or light signals to quickly communicate with distant
people. Using the Greek term of far writing, these old systems were the
first telegraph communications.
A British
inventor, William Sturgeon came up with an electromagnet and that opened up a
whole new field. But took an American inventor, Joseph Henry, to play around
with the electromagnet. He was able to transmit a signal over a wire for one
mile and ring a bell at the other end. Samuel Morse took Henry’s invention and
bettered it. Thus started the first commercial use of the telegraph in 1838. In
1843, Congress awarded Morse $30,000 to create the first telegraph system
between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland, a distance of 40 miles.
Morse invented a
code that consisted of dots and dashes to replace the alphanumeric system. A
person on one end could send the code and another person listening at the next
station would receive the code, write it down, and send it along to the next
destination, or have it delivered locally.
Using the railroad
land, the telegraph system went to the various railroad stations that were
manned 24/7. That made the most sense because trains traveled in fairly
straight lines, and the telegraph had to travel in a straight line. No
right turns! There were no telegraph stations in remote towns off the path of
the railroads. If there was a telegraph office in a remote town, that office
was probably a postal office. They would take the note and send someone on
horseback to the nearest town with a telegraph relay station. Then it would be
transmitted.
Could a remote town
have an actual telegraph office? Yes. But it would be extremely expensive
because the telegraph operator by the railroad would have to send the message
on a separate line, and it would have to be received by another telegraph
operator at the destination. Also there was the expense of erecting the line on
which it would travel and buying the land for that line. The railroads were
using land given to them by the government and the telegraph companies used
that same land. There is no remote telegraph station that I am aware. Although
within a city, there often several.
Western Union
supplied the lines and the trained operators. The US postal system got into the
telegraph business but merged in the 20th century with Western
Union.
The telegraph was
used extensively during the Civil War. It was during that time that the
telegraph crossed the USA. It was said that President Lincoln often stayed at
the telegraph office to hear from his generals.
It also meant any news traveled
faster. In 1851, a functional telegraph wire was laid under the English
Channel, giving fast communications between London and Paris. Once the 2500
miles of cable was laid between Newfoundland and Ireland in 1858, the world
would never be the same. Soon underwater cables connected places like Singapore
to Australia. By the end of the 1800’s, the world was covered with telegraph
wires.
As the telegraph
took a foothold in communications, the telephone began to replace it. Today,
satellites utilizing cell phones and computers to communicate connect us. Yet,
President Lincoln is considered the technology president, as he was the first
to use electronic communication.
Most of rural
America in the 1800's still communicated by mail placed in pouches that hung from poles. A
train would whiz by and, using a shepherd’s hook, it would grab the pouch and
drop another with mail to be delivered. We continued to use that method for
another hundred years. But telegraph was available, except it was expensive.
Trains were the
main users of the telegraph to communicate train movement, weather, and serious
problems. It wasn’t until the 1900’s that multiplexers made it possible for the
telegraph to transmit eight signals at once. That meant four signals in each
direction at once. (And you thought multiplexer was a new computer term?)
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| A Telegraph Machine |
Understanding how
things work makes a huge difference when we write, and it makes an even bigger
difference for the reader who expects our historical stories to be accurate.
I’m so pleased to be part of the Sweethearts of the West because I know my
fellow authors here stand on their heads to provide accurate history within
their stories. I hope that you as a reader enjoy our books and learn a little
bit of history that was never taught in school.
Happy Holidays to
all our readers no matter what you celebrate. I love this time of year because
everyone seems to smile more and is more courteous. Enjoy the holidays, and a
very merry one from my house to yours!
A Creek in Wyoming
Enjoy a contemporary Christmas story,
A Snowy Christmas in Wyoming. The historic story behind this one is coming in 2020. This is the story that launched me into writing historic fiction when I mentioned the diary.
