The History of the Telegraph

During the French Revolution, Claude Chappe's optical telegraph — chains of hilltop semaphore towers with pivoting arms — carried its first messages between Paris and Lille. France built the network to gain military and administrative speed; "telegraph" (far-writer) entered the language.

Location: Paris, France

William Cooke and scientist Charles Wheatstone patented a needle telegraph in England, and by 1839 it ran commercially on the Great Western Railway between Paddington and West Drayton — the world's first commercial electrical telegraph service. Their partnership, later strained by priority disputes, put Britain's railways at the technology's front line.

Location: London, England

Samuel Morse transmitted the biblical phrase "What hath God wrought" by his dot-and-dash code from the US Capitol to Baltimore on the first American long-distance telegraph line, built with a federal grant. Morse code became the standard language of telegraphy for the next century and a half.

Location: Washington, D.C., United States

The first successful submarine telegraph cable crossed the English Channel, linking Britain and France. Insulated with gutta-percha, the cable proved undersea telegraphy practical and opened the way to international cable networks.

Location: Dover, England

After several failed attempts, a transatlantic cable connected Ireland and Newfoundland, and Queen Victoria and US President James Buchanan exchanged congratulatory messages. Wild celebrations followed, but the cable failed after about three weeks. The venture nonetheless demonstrated intercontinental messaging was possible.

Western Union completed the first US transcontinental telegraph line, linking East and West coasts. The Pony Express, the fastest physical mail service, shut down two days later. Western Union's consolidation of lines made it the dominant US telegraph company.

Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, United States

Through the 1860s and 1870s, Western Union absorbed rivals and controlled most US telegraph traffic, favoring some customers and setting rates with little constraint. Later, farmers' organizations including the Grange and the Populist Party demanded telegraph operation as a public utility or postal service — an antimonopoly debate that recurred into the telephone era.

Location: United States

After the 1865 attempt ended with a lost cable mid-Atlantic, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship Great Eastern laid a working transatlantic cable that entered reliable service in 1866, recovering the 1865 cable as well. Message time between continents fell from about ten days by ship to minutes.

Location: Heart's Content, Newfoundland

Britain's "All Red Line" — a chain of strategically routed submarine cables touching only British territory — was completed with the Pacific cable link from Canada through Australia and New Zealand to South Africa. By the early 1900s, telegraph cables circled the planet, and news agencies such as Reuters and the Associated Press had built global businesses on them.

Location: British Empire

British cable interception decoded the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany offered Mexico US territory in exchange for alliance. Its publication helped bring the United States into World War I — a demonstration that control and surveillance of telegraph networks had become a strategic asset of empires.

The telephone after 1876 and then radio and data networks progressively absorbed the telegraph's functions. Western Union, once America's communications monopoly, sent its last telegram in January 2006, ending the commercial era of the technology that had first connected the world in real time.

Location: United States