The Telegraph: How Samuel Morse’s Invention Revolutionized Communication

For all of human history, news and information traveled no faster than a man or horse could walk or a ship could sail. That changed on May 24, 1844 when inventor Samuel F.B. Morse tapped out a single sentence over a wire strung between Washington DC and nearby Baltimore: “What hath God wrought?” Seconds later, his associate in Baltimore tapped the same message back, ushering in the telegraphic age.

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Morse was a painter, not an inventor. He had become interested in the idea of using electromagnetism to transmit information while chatting with a scientist on the way home from a trip to Europe in 1832. He partnered with others to develop his system, using the underlying science and technological advances already pioneered in Europe to develop a system of relaying messages over wire.

Within a few years, they worked out the basic system, and Morse even developed his own simple code that eventually became known as Morse Code. In 1844, he was given $30,000 by Congress to refine his work, which he demonstrated at the Capitol in May 1845.

Introduction of the Telegraph

Morse initially wanted the government to buy his rights and patents, in the belief that his innovation should be a government service like the Post Office. His offering price was $100,000 (equivalent to roughly $3.4 million in 2020). To his disappointment, the government declined, and he turned to private investors. He and his partners founded the Magnetic Telegraph Company in May 1845, with the goal of building a line from Washington to New York. Other entrepreneurs soon followed suit.

Within five years of Morse’s first big public transmission, dozens of new companies had laid over 21,000 miles of telegraph lines. All major cities were connected as early as 1851. The first transatlantic cables were completed in 1858; the first transcontinental line was operational by 1861.

By the mid-1850s, the industry began to run up against the limits of an overly-crowded market. New York City alone was served by ten competing companies. Across the country, different areas used different standards, and often different systems: many used the Morse system, but others adopted a system developed by Scottish inventor Alexander Bain in 1848. This lack of consistent standards led to poor service, as transmissions often became garbled or lost in the tangle of overlapping lines.

Starting in 1852, when the Bain system was declared patent infringement by the US Supreme Court, major telegraph companies began a period of cooperation and standardization. Six regional monopolies agreed to what was called the “Treaty of the Six Nations,” establishing a shared network of main lines and acquiring many of the smaller firms in their regions.

Economic Impact of the Telegraph

The ability to rapidly transmit information across long distances revolutionized American commerce. Some economic historians believe that it was one of the key technologies that accelerated domestic and international trade and contributed to the industrialization of the United States.

In a study of 20,400 messages sent by the New York and New England Telegraph Company in November 1856, only around 2,000 were purely social, mostly related to illness and deaths. The remaining 18,500  focused on business. This was very different than in Europe, where the majority of the traffic consisted of personal messages throughout the 19th Century.

Businessmen used telegrams to send buy and sell orders, to give instructions for payment, to set appointments, to share commodity prices, give freight and shipping news, and share revenue reports. Later, it became a key instrument to wire money orders between accounts. It also made the business world less regional in nature, allowing the smaller cities, especially those in the West and Midwest, to become more competitive with the mature East Coast trading centers.

Telegraph’s Impact on Warfare

The telegraph’s impact on warfare was also significant. During the Crimean War (1853-1856), the telegraph was used for the first time to provide rapid communication between the front lines and the command centers. This allowed for more efficient troop movements and supply distribution. Similarly, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), the telegraph played a crucial role in transmitting orders, coordinating troop movements, and relaying battlefield intelligence. President Abraham Lincoln even had a telegraph office installed in the War Department next to the White House, allowing him to monitor battlefield developments in real-time.

Telegraph’s Impact on Diplomacy

The telegraph also had a profound impact on diplomacy and international relations. For the first time, diplomatic messages could be transmitted rapidly across great distances, allowing for more timely negotiations and crisis management. The telegraph played a key role in the resolution of the Trent Affair in 1861, a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Great Britain that threatened to draw the British into the American Civil War. Rapid telegraph communication allowed for a peaceful resolution to the crisis, averting a potential war between the two nations.

Growth of Newspapers

The telegraph also had a significant impact on the news industry. Newspapers were already a booming  industry, with more than 1,600 in circulation by 1840. But the speed with which news spread across the country, like all information, moved no faster than the mail. With the telegraph, news could spread across the country in hours and days, not weeks and months, and this helped feed the country’s voracious appetite for news and debate. According to the American Antiquarian Society, by 1850, the number of American newspapers had climbed to 2,500 with an annual circulation of half a billion issues — at a time when the US population was barely 23 million. Most of these were four-page weeklies, but the number of daily papers shot up from 138 in 1840 to 254 in 1850.

To reduce the costs of sending large blocks of information over the wires, the industry began to pool resources. The Associated Press began in 1848; in Europe, the Reuters news service was established in 1849. Both still play a major role in global news.

The Decline of the Telegraph

The Treaty of the Six Nations was nullified by the Civil War, and the postwar period brought a new era of competition. By 1885, there were more than 200 small telegraph companies across the country, some of them only running a few miles between communities. Over time, many of these companies failed, and many others were absorbed into the behemoth of the Western Union Telegraph Company.

Western Union got its start in 1851, running a line between Buffalo, New York and St. Louis, Missouri. By the late 1860s, it was quickly becoming the dominant player in the telegraph industry. Its great innovation was to partner with the railroads, especially the transcontinental Union Pacific line completed in 1869. The deal was simple: Western Union would run its lines in the right-of-way along the tracks and set up offices in the major train stations. In return, the railroad companies could send all their messages for free, saving them millions in communications costs.

Over time, the company acquired over 500 smaller companies and gained the monopoly in the telegraph industry in the United States. By 1902, they controlled almost a million miles of telegraph lines and two undersea cable lines. While the company continues on today as a financial and communication company, they sent their last telegrams in 2006, after falling to a low of just 20,000 telegrams per year.

The popularity of the telegram began to decline as new technologies took its place: first telephones, then faxes, and later computers. By the early 21st Century, it would seem that the industry was dead. In fact, there were a flurry of reports in the media in 2013 that the last-ever telegram had been sent by a telegraph company in India.

This, however, appears to be an urban legend. According to International Telegram, at least 17 million telegrams are still sent each year. It remains a preferred means of communication for people in parts of Asia, as well as remaining the traditional communication methods of royal families and some governments.

Despite the telegraph’s eventual decline, its legacy lives on in the communication technologies we use today. The principles of electrical communication pioneered by the telegraph paved the way for the development of the telephone, radio, and eventually the internet. In many ways, the telegraph was the first step in the creation of the globalized, interconnected world we live in today. As we continue to develop new and more advanced communication technologies, it is important to remember the groundbreaking role the telegraph played in shaping the modern world.

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Sources:

Coe, Lewis. The Telegraph: A History of Morse’s Invention and Its Predecessors in the United States. United States, McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers, 2003.

Hochfelder, David. The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920. United States, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

Lubrano, Annteresa. The Telegraph: How Technology Innovation Caused Social Change. United States, Taylor & Francis, 2013.

Reid, James D. The Telegraph in America: Its Founders, Promoters, and Noted Men. United States, Arno Press, 1974.

Updated: March 14, 2024