Antebellum America: The Invention of the Telegraph
The invention of the telegraph affected the United States in much the way that the internet would over a century and a half later. Suddenly news travelled faster than the fastest horse. Primitive telegraphs had been experimented with in Europe as early as the mid to late 1700s. In the United States, sometime in 1826 or 1827, a man named Harrison Gray Dyar had successfully experimented with electrical telegraphy in Massachusetts, but did not pursue the idea. A decade later in 1836, David Alter of Pennsylvania developed a working but impractical electrical telegraph system, but never develops the idea into a practical system. He rigged the telegraph between his house and his barn, but did not pursue the idea commercially because he had several other inventions on the go.
In January of 1837, Samuel Chester Reid, a naval officer who had fought in the War of 1812, proposed that the U.S. Congress fund an optical telegraph (semaphore line) from New York to New Orleans. But later that year it was Samuel Morse, a painter of portraits and an inventor, who filed a patent for the first electrical telegraph in the United States. When David Alter was later interviewed about Morse's patent, he said "I may say that there is no connection at all between the telegraph of Morse and others and that of myself. Professor Morse most probably never heard of me or my Elderton telegraph."
While returning by ship from Europe in 1832, Morse met Charles Thomas Jackson of Boston, a man who was an expert at the time in electromagnetism. Morse was able to witness various experiments with Jackson's electromagnet, and he later said that it was from this experience that he developed the concept of a single-wire telegraph. He put aside his painting, and went to work on the original Morse telegraph. He submitted with his patent application and would later develop the Morse code, which would become the primary language of telegraphy in the world.
At the time other inventors in Europe such as William Cooke and Professor Charles Wheatstone had learned, of the electromagnetic telegraph in 1833. They had reached the stage of launching a commercial telegraph prior to Morse. In England, Cooke became fascinated by electrical telegraphy in 1836. He was a wealthy man and he used his financial resources to build a small electrical telegraph. Professor Wheatstone also was experimenting with telegraphy. It was he who discovered that a single large battery would not carry a telegraphic signal over long distances. He realized that numerous small batteries were far more efficient. Cooke and Wheatstone formed a partnership and patented the electrical telegraph in May 1837. But it was Morse who would develop a cheaper method of telegraphy.
Morse experienced problems in getting a telegraphic signal to carry over more than a few hundred yards of wire. He enlisted the help of Professor Leonard Gale, who taught chemistry at New York University. With Gale's help, Morse was able to add extra circuits or relays at frequent intervals and was soon able to send a message through ten miles of wire. Morse and Gale were soon joined by Alfred Vail, an enthusiastic and intelligent young man who was able to put something into the project that was badly needed: money.
On January 11, 1838, at the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey, Morse and Vail made the first public demonstration of the electric telegraph. They chose a nearby factory house as their demonstration site. Morse devised a system of electromagnetic relays. The range of the telegraph was limited to two miles. The first public transmission sent the message, "A patient waiter is no loser." A local crowd was on hand to witness the event.
Morse traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1838 seeking federal sponsorship for a telegraph line. He was unsuccessful. He went to Europe, seeking both sponsorship and patents, but Cooke and Wheatstone had already established priority in that market. When he returned to the US, Morse gained financial backing from the US government with the help of Maine congressman Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith. This funding is thought to be the first instance of government support to a private researcher.
In December 1842, Morse connected two committee rooms in the Capitol, and sent messages back and forth to demonstrate his telegraph system. Congress appropriated $30,000 ($872,464 in modern dollars) in 1843 for construction of an experimental 38-mile telegraph line between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore along the right-of-way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. As an impressive demonstration, on May 1, 1844, the telegraph transmitted news of the Whig Party's nomination of Henry Clay for U.S. president from the party's convention in Baltimore to the Capitol Building in Washington.
On May 24, 1844, the line was officially opened as Morse sent the now-famous words, "What hath God wrought," from the Supreme Court chamber in the basement of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., to the Mount Clare Railway Station in Baltimore. These words were chosen by Annie Ellsworth, who took them from the Bible (Numbers 23:23). Her father was U.S. Patent Commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, and he had been a strong and early supporter of Morse's invention and had worked to secure early funding for it. The telegraph could now transmit thirty characters per minute.
In May 1845, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed with the intention of building telegraph lines from New York City to a number of large cities including Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, and as far west as the Mississippi River. Telegraph lines rapidly spread throughout the United States in the next few years, with 12,000 miles of wire laid by 1850.
Morse had referred to himself as “an American who knows no North nor South nor East nor West, but who feels that everyone within the United States is his fellow countryman.” But the telegraph would only serve as an aid to North-South sectionalism. It rocketed information ahead at previously unknown speeds. Much like social media today is used to fuel polarization between opposing political factions, telegraph served to make the opposing factions of its time more distrustful of one another. Notwithstanding his New England origins, Morse was friendly toward white Southerners. In his earlier career as a painter, he had traveled South to do commissioned portraits, and he personally saw slavery as a benefit to everyone involved. He held abolitionists in contempt.
President James K. Polk made use of telegraph technology to enhance his plans for expansionism as well as a means of improving military communication and making the United States a more efficient military power. Polk's inauguration was the first inaugural ceremony to be reported by telegraph,
By 1848, when the Mexican War concluded, the telegraph linked North and South more closely than ever before. Telegraphy changed journalism as newspaper publishers quickly realized the new technology’s potential. Stories would include the magical words “By Magnetic Telegraph” to alerted readers that it was reporting events that had just taken place hundreds of miles away.
In 1858 a telegram of ninety-eight words was sent from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan of the United States, openeing a new era in global communication. The Queen’s message of congratulations took sixteen and a half hours to transmit through the new transatlantic telegraph cable. After White House staff had satisfied themselves that it was not a hoax, the President sent a reply of 143 words that took ten hours to transmit. Without the cable, communication in one direction alone would have taken an estimated twelve days by the speediest combination of inland telegraph and fast steamer. The Atlantic crossing had been achieved only at the third attempt, and until the first messages passed on August 17th, 1858.
By 1860, there were 50,000 miles of telegraph in the United States, all built in the previous 16 years. Some 3,725 American newspapers were published daily or weekly. Fewer than 200 million newspaper copies were printed in 1840, but this number grew to almost 900 million in 1860. Some optimists had homed that improved communications and transport would knit the Union together. They predicted that Americans would become “more and more one people, thinking and acting alike.” But instead national unity unraveled as North and South began to see each other more clearly, and as each discovered how different the other had become. Partisan spin doctors of the 1850s had the means to play up North-South differences. Republicans warned that a “slave power conspiracy” stood poised to take over the fertile West, while Southern Democrats depicted Republicans as dangerous radicals whose success would lead to a violent abolitionist invasion of the slave states.
In January of 1837, Samuel Chester Reid, a naval officer who had fought in the War of 1812, proposed that the U.S. Congress fund an optical telegraph (semaphore line) from New York to New Orleans. But later that year it was Samuel Morse, a painter of portraits and an inventor, who filed a patent for the first electrical telegraph in the United States. When David Alter was later interviewed about Morse's patent, he said "I may say that there is no connection at all between the telegraph of Morse and others and that of myself. Professor Morse most probably never heard of me or my Elderton telegraph."
While returning by ship from Europe in 1832, Morse met Charles Thomas Jackson of Boston, a man who was an expert at the time in electromagnetism. Morse was able to witness various experiments with Jackson's electromagnet, and he later said that it was from this experience that he developed the concept of a single-wire telegraph. He put aside his painting, and went to work on the original Morse telegraph. He submitted with his patent application and would later develop the Morse code, which would become the primary language of telegraphy in the world.
At the time other inventors in Europe such as William Cooke and Professor Charles Wheatstone had learned, of the electromagnetic telegraph in 1833. They had reached the stage of launching a commercial telegraph prior to Morse. In England, Cooke became fascinated by electrical telegraphy in 1836. He was a wealthy man and he used his financial resources to build a small electrical telegraph. Professor Wheatstone also was experimenting with telegraphy. It was he who discovered that a single large battery would not carry a telegraphic signal over long distances. He realized that numerous small batteries were far more efficient. Cooke and Wheatstone formed a partnership and patented the electrical telegraph in May 1837. But it was Morse who would develop a cheaper method of telegraphy.
Morse experienced problems in getting a telegraphic signal to carry over more than a few hundred yards of wire. He enlisted the help of Professor Leonard Gale, who taught chemistry at New York University. With Gale's help, Morse was able to add extra circuits or relays at frequent intervals and was soon able to send a message through ten miles of wire. Morse and Gale were soon joined by Alfred Vail, an enthusiastic and intelligent young man who was able to put something into the project that was badly needed: money.
On January 11, 1838, at the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey, Morse and Vail made the first public demonstration of the electric telegraph. They chose a nearby factory house as their demonstration site. Morse devised a system of electromagnetic relays. The range of the telegraph was limited to two miles. The first public transmission sent the message, "A patient waiter is no loser." A local crowd was on hand to witness the event.
Morse traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1838 seeking federal sponsorship for a telegraph line. He was unsuccessful. He went to Europe, seeking both sponsorship and patents, but Cooke and Wheatstone had already established priority in that market. When he returned to the US, Morse gained financial backing from the US government with the help of Maine congressman Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith. This funding is thought to be the first instance of government support to a private researcher.
In December 1842, Morse connected two committee rooms in the Capitol, and sent messages back and forth to demonstrate his telegraph system. Congress appropriated $30,000 ($872,464 in modern dollars) in 1843 for construction of an experimental 38-mile telegraph line between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore along the right-of-way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. As an impressive demonstration, on May 1, 1844, the telegraph transmitted news of the Whig Party's nomination of Henry Clay for U.S. president from the party's convention in Baltimore to the Capitol Building in Washington.
On May 24, 1844, the line was officially opened as Morse sent the now-famous words, "What hath God wrought," from the Supreme Court chamber in the basement of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., to the Mount Clare Railway Station in Baltimore. These words were chosen by Annie Ellsworth, who took them from the Bible (Numbers 23:23). Her father was U.S. Patent Commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, and he had been a strong and early supporter of Morse's invention and had worked to secure early funding for it. The telegraph could now transmit thirty characters per minute.
In May 1845, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed with the intention of building telegraph lines from New York City to a number of large cities including Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, and as far west as the Mississippi River. Telegraph lines rapidly spread throughout the United States in the next few years, with 12,000 miles of wire laid by 1850.
Morse had referred to himself as “an American who knows no North nor South nor East nor West, but who feels that everyone within the United States is his fellow countryman.” But the telegraph would only serve as an aid to North-South sectionalism. It rocketed information ahead at previously unknown speeds. Much like social media today is used to fuel polarization between opposing political factions, telegraph served to make the opposing factions of its time more distrustful of one another. Notwithstanding his New England origins, Morse was friendly toward white Southerners. In his earlier career as a painter, he had traveled South to do commissioned portraits, and he personally saw slavery as a benefit to everyone involved. He held abolitionists in contempt.
President James K. Polk made use of telegraph technology to enhance his plans for expansionism as well as a means of improving military communication and making the United States a more efficient military power. Polk's inauguration was the first inaugural ceremony to be reported by telegraph,
By 1848, when the Mexican War concluded, the telegraph linked North and South more closely than ever before. Telegraphy changed journalism as newspaper publishers quickly realized the new technology’s potential. Stories would include the magical words “By Magnetic Telegraph” to alerted readers that it was reporting events that had just taken place hundreds of miles away.
In 1858 a telegram of ninety-eight words was sent from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan of the United States, openeing a new era in global communication. The Queen’s message of congratulations took sixteen and a half hours to transmit through the new transatlantic telegraph cable. After White House staff had satisfied themselves that it was not a hoax, the President sent a reply of 143 words that took ten hours to transmit. Without the cable, communication in one direction alone would have taken an estimated twelve days by the speediest combination of inland telegraph and fast steamer. The Atlantic crossing had been achieved only at the third attempt, and until the first messages passed on August 17th, 1858.
By 1860, there were 50,000 miles of telegraph in the United States, all built in the previous 16 years. Some 3,725 American newspapers were published daily or weekly. Fewer than 200 million newspaper copies were printed in 1840, but this number grew to almost 900 million in 1860. Some optimists had homed that improved communications and transport would knit the Union together. They predicted that Americans would become “more and more one people, thinking and acting alike.” But instead national unity unraveled as North and South began to see each other more clearly, and as each discovered how different the other had become. Partisan spin doctors of the 1850s had the means to play up North-South differences. Republicans warned that a “slave power conspiracy” stood poised to take over the fertile West, while Southern Democrats depicted Republicans as dangerous radicals whose success would lead to a violent abolitionist invasion of the slave states.