The telegraph represented a disruptive innovation in the history of the United States from its invention in the 1830s onward by quickly becoming a vital part of the nation's communication infrastructure. Its relative importance declined with the spread of telephones in the 20th century. Telegraph service permitted short texts to be sent cheaply and arrive in a matter of minutes to hours, instead of days or weeks. Telegraphy facilitated faster and more profitable freight and passenger railway traffic, consolidated financial and commodity markets, sped political news and commentary, and lowered information costs for companies.
Early years: 1832 to 1860 Progress in electric devices in Europe lead inventors to create electrical telegraph systems, such as the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph in England. They invented complex systems with a separate key for each letter of the alphabet. In 1832, Samuel Morse, an American artist, with help from scientist Leonard Gale, searched for a simpler idea for an electromagnetic recording system. Telegraphers would tap their fingers on a knob and the system imprinted dots and dashes onto a moving strip of paper on a distant receiver. Furthermore, he created the American Morse code in the 1840s, allowing telegraphers to rapidly send and receive messages. With experience they could listen to the clicks and "hear" words without looking at the paper record. Morse patented the system and tried to persuade Congress to adopt it as a government-owned and operated system like the post office. However, the Democrats in power were hostile to federal spending. In 1837, Morse obtained funding from Congress to build a telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore, a distance of about forty miles. He spent seven years perfecting the system. Finally on May 24, 1844, he sent the first message, "What hath God wrought." Politicians in Washington were paying close attention to the national presidential nominating conventions underway in Baltimore and immediately recognized the advantages of near-instantaneous news reports. By 1856, long-distance lines from The Magnetic Telegraph Company linked New York City to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, along with points in between. Soon there was a link from Washington across the South to New Orleans. In 1851, Hiram Sibley formed the Western Union Telegraph Company. It acquired local and regional telegraph companies, and soon became the largest in the United States, headed toward a near monopoly in 1866. Meanwhile, the British replaced their own slow system with the faster Morse system.
Newspaper users The introduction of telegraphy had a dramatic impact on the newspaper industry. A group of New York newspapers formed the New York Associated Press (NYAP) in 1846 to regularize news transmission. According to Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb, after a rocky start, NYAP's relationship with telegraph companies improved significantly once Western Union became the dominant player in 1866. The two companies joined forces to create a formidable monopoly, with Western Union providing NYAP with preferential rates on the condition that they solely use their services and not those of their rivals. This mutually beneficial arrangement was decisive in building both companies. Meanwhile, regional press associations outside of New York City sprouted up among newspapers and aligned themselves with NYAP, with the Western Associated Press being one of the most important. Over time, the Western Associated Press surpassed NYAP in significance and was eventually renamed the Associated Press (AP) in the 1890s. According to Richard R. John, the AP transformed into a news broker where information was a tradable commodity. News brokers were granted privileges like special rates and, crucially, priority access to the telegraph wires by telegraph officials. Now every newspaper had access to major news stories hours after they were first reported, as well as texts of influential editorials and speeches. Clippings from the New-York Tribune edited by Horace Greeley became especially influential for the Whig Party newspapers, and after 1854 for the press of the new Republican Party. The coordination of the distribution of time-sensitive information by newsbrokers, such as the AP, gave them substantial influence that many deemed politically hazardous, resulting in various public controversies during the Gilded Age.
1861–1900 In 1861-1865 the telegraph played a crucial role in the American Civil War, allowing for rapid communication inside marching armies, and between the national capitals and field armies, which was facilitated by the operation of the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps. The Confederacy had a much weaker system than the Union, and Union forces systematically listened in, or destroyed its lines. In 1866 the first transatlantic telegraph cable was completed, connecting America and Europe. The completion of the First transcontinental telegraph in 1861 allowed messages to be sent from coast to coast in a matter of hours rather than weeks. In the late 1860s and 1870s, the telegraph expanded rapidly westward, connecting cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, and San Francisco. By the 1880s, telegraph lines crisscrossed the country, connecting practically all towns and cities of all sizes. The telegraph was used for everything from sending personal messages to conducting business deals and transmitting news stories. According to business historian H. W. Brands, the telegraph separated communication from transportation. This caused American financial markets based in New York to become even more consolidated as they dominated the nation's economy. Prompt news of price changes is most valuable commodity traded in financial markets. With the telegraph replacing communication via steam boat and railroad train, high priority data now move across the states at low cost. Speculators based in New York had an advantage, and other cities could not compete. The Atlantic cable further expanded the geography of speedy information, allowing European investors to operate in the American market almost as efficiently as those with offices in the states, as the message time between London and New York plunged from several weeks to just several minutes.
Telephone challenge
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