Key Post 2: EOTO Technology Timeline

 All about the Telegraph! 

 

               

        

At the beginning of the 19th century, the best way to ensure a message would properly travel to the intended recipient was to deliver a note by hand or to entrust the note to another who would have to travel and deliver it. Messages that needed to travel even further took weeks or months to arrive. What compounded long-distance communication even further was the geographical composition of the young United States. Large cities such as New York and Philadelphia certainly harbored a large proportion of citizens, but a great deal also lived in smaller towns or in isolated wilderness. Yet as the country continued its manifest destiny of westward expansion, a new system of communication was needed to deliver information in a timely manner. Enter Samuel Morse, pioneer of human communication. Morse did not initially begin his adult life as an inventor. In fact, he painted portraits of figures such as Marquis de Lafayette, James Monroe, and many others. His inspiration for inventing the telegraph came from a conversation he heard about electromagnets while on a ship returning home from Europe. Together with Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, Samuel Morse invented and patented the first-ever electric telegraph.

                                

Before the machine itself came along, a system was needed in order to send/receive messages. Samuel Morse invented a code bearing his name (morse code) as the method to how these messages could be transcribed. The code was simple- each letter of the alphabet would get its own unique series consisting of short clicks called dots (.) and/or long clicks dashes (-). In order to make the process easier, common letters such as a or e would have simple sequences  (.- for a) whereas scarcer-used letters such as x would have more complex sequences (-..-). This is partially why the international code for distress is recognized as SOS. Although its meaning is commonly attributed to something such as "save our ship" or "save our souls," this series of letters was chosen for use by militaries decades later because of the simple and recognizable sequences of the letters S (...) and O (---). 

The composition of a telegraph seems simple over a century and a half later, but it was quite the technological achievement at its inception. Here are the steps to how a telegram message would be sent and received

1. Toggle the transmission key to send the desired message leaving pauses between letters and words
2. The signal from the key travels along the body of the telegraph via the battery as electrical waves to the register
3. The waves are received and travel along the infrastructure of poles (which were widely available beginning during the 1860's)
4. Once the waves reach the intended destination, the message is received through the register by way of the electromagnet 
5. The message is transcribed by the telegraph on paper using the morse code of dots and dashes. It is also received by a clicking sound of the telegraph

With help from others, Morse was able to get a telegraph line built from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland. Morse demonstrated the ability of his invention in the chambers of the Supreme Court on May 24, 1844. He telegraphed his partner Alfred Vail, who was in Baltimore, the phrase "What hath God wrought?" an excerpt from Numbers 23:23 of the Bible. Morse was a devout Christian, and so this message was chosen by a close family friend as a means of celebrating the Lord's work in this act which would change human communication. Vail received the message and the world was changed in that moment. 

        

Not long after this demonstration, the telegraph became the preferred method of communication during the Civil War. When the war began, there were no telegraph lines connected to the War Department or the White House. This soon changed for the War Department but not the White House as President Lincoln realized how beneficial it could be to be in touch with his troops on the frontlines. Throughout his presidency, Lincoln sent nearly one thousand telegraphs mostly about the War. He constantly spent time in long-distance dialogue with his generals and on some occasions slept on a cot if a conflict was still in progress. One of most famous telegraphs went to future president Ulysses S. Grant towards the end of the war in 1864 at the Siege of Petersburg, “Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.” The union had far greater telegraph infrastructure than the confederacy, which inevitably contributed to their once-improbable victory.  

Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861 and delivered the last message nearly 150 years later in 2006. Although the telegraph is no longer in practice, it established a precedent by removing the limitation of physical travel for messages. In the digital age, sending a text message, making a phone call, and composing an email further reflect this principle. Morse's curiosity with the intricacies of the electromagnet led to the serendipity of modern communication.

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-F-B-Morse

https://stg.classzone.com/books/ms/na/ss/amhist-07/research_and_writing/writing_models/us8wm_u6_telegraph.pdf

https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/may-24/#:~:text=to%20this%20page-,What%20Hath%20God%20Wrought%3F,Washington%2C%20D.C.%2C%20to%20Baltimore.

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

https://nrich.maths.org/2198#:~:text=Morse%20code%20was%20invented%20by,or%20carried%20them%20in%20writing.

https://www.americanheritage.com/what-hath-god-wrought

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/30860

https://nationalponyexpress.org/historic-pony-express-trail/1860-1861-history/

https://time.com/4307892/samuel-morse-telegraph-history/

https://www.history.com/news/abraham-lincoln-telegraph-civil-war

https://answersingenesis.org/creation-scientists/profiles/samuel-morse-the-artist-who-invented-the-morse-code/

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/morse-demonstrates-telegraph