By Jennifer Uhlarik
I’m sure, if you’re a student of American history or you’ve read the Heroes, Heroines, and History blog for any length of time, most of you have heard of the Transcontinental Railroad, which united the East and West coasts of this nation on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah. However, did you know there was a different transcontinental line that connected the east and west coasts of our country before the railroad? Any guesses what it was?
It was a telegraph line!
Communication From A Distance
From the earliest days of history, man needed a way to convey messages across a long distance quickly. So various forms of communication were created. Past civilizations used drums or musical instruments that could be heard from a long way off, with different rhythms or notes conveying different messages. Other cultures used torches, signal fires, or puffs of smoke to communicate across some distance. Militaries and navies have used flags to carry important messages to the view of others afar off. But each of these methods was greatly hampered by the limitations of how far sounds could travel—or how far the human eye could see.
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| Nautical Flag Alphabet |
In the late 1700s, Claude and Ignace Chappe, a pair of French brothers, built a semaphore signaling device that consisted of a rotating post, placed on high ground, with two moveable arms. Depending on how the arms were positioned, different messages could be depicted, similar in nature to the old semaphore flag alphabet. One of these towers would be placed every three to six miles and people would use telescopes to watch for movement and incoming messages from the next nearest tower. Obviously, for its time, it was a great advancement, but as things progressed and people spread across continents, better forms of communication were needed.
The Electromagnetic Telegraph
As the world began to experiment with electricity, things progressed beyond the old, manual semaphore signaling devices. In 1837, two electromagnetic telegraphs were patented at almost the same time—one by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone of Britain…and one by art professor Samuel Morse, here in America. The former sent electric currents through a series of wires, which would cause several needles to point at letters and numbers to spell out words. The latter used a key-type transmitter to emit a series of short and long taps, now famously known as the dots and dashes of Morse Code.
Britain picked up the invention of Sirs Cooke and Wheatstone and ran with it in their nation, despite its complex design. Meanwhile, Morse gave a private showing of his simpler telegraph’s uses and abilities to his friends early in 1837. Within a few years, the American government had funded his invention. They set up a 35-mile-long demonstration line between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD, which ran on poles beside an existing railroad line. The first telegram sent between the two was just four words. “What hath God wrought!” But with those four words, a new era began.
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| Samuel Morse, creator of Morse Code and the telegraph. |
The Telegraph Era
Morse’s telegraph took off. By the end of the 1840s, miles of wire was stretched across the landscape, connecting the eastern United States, with offices and trained telegraphers interspersed between. At first, the telegraph’s main use was in railroad traffic control, but new companies quickly popped up in conjunction with Morse’s new invention, and people began sending telegraphs to family and friends. Over fifty small telegraph companies popped up after the invention’s debut.
Of course, as often happens, so many small, independent telegraph companies couldn’t make a living alone, and several of those companies consolidated, first under the name of the New York and Mississippi Telegraph Company—and in 1856, switching names to the Western Union Telegraph Company. It became the largest and most influential telegraph company in America.
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| Morse's Telegraph Key |
Another interesting result of the telegraph era was that newspapers began to join forces, finding a way to pool their telegraph expenses. During this time, the Associated Press came about because four daily New York newspapers each needed to obtain and relay information on the Mexican American war. They combined their resources so that they all could get the information they needed for reporting on the war.
Reuters, a telegraph company in Paris, France, also got its start, the brainchild of Paul Julius Reuters. He did everything from sending commercial telegraphs to disseminating political material to other countries. He also coaxed newspapers to subscribe to his service so that he could report to them on important events happening around the country—and later the world—which they could then write about in their newspapers.
Western Union Makes Its Mark On America
The telegraph lines continued to grow and expand, though not fully across the country…yet. The new state of California began adding telegraph lines to connect their towns and cities up and down the state, but there was no line that connected east and west coasts of the country. So, throughout the 1850s, California dangled a carrot of sorts, encouraging telegraph companies to make such a countrywide connection by offering the first company to do so $6,000 per year for their efforts. Two companies in California began such an endeavor, one following the Central Overland Trail through Nevada, and another to the south along the Butterfield Overland Mail route. However, neither completed their lines.
The United States government also saw a need to be able to connect the military forts throughout the country from coast to coast. Government representatives spoke to Western Union, encouraging them to take on the project. However, investors with the company found the project too risky. How could they manage the cost of upkeep on such a massive project? So, in June 1860, President James Buchanan urged Congress to pass the Pacific Telegraph Act, which would make a transcontinental telegraph lines, giving government priority on the line over people’s private telegrams, as well as offering the Smithsonian Institution and other such organizations free use for scientific purposes. The act was passed, and the government took bids on the project, which would net the winner $40,000 a year for ten years (for building and upkeep).
Though plenty of companies initially put in bids for the job, all but Western Union withdrew their proposals before the application period was done. As the last man standing, Western Union got the job—and began working with other companies out west to complete the cross-country telegraph line. Work began on Independence Day in 1861, with crews working from opposite ends of the divide. On each end, an advance crew would go out to survey and mark the path, and a second crew would come behind, digging holes, putting in the telegraph poles, and stringing the wire. Depending on the terrain, the crews were able to cover anywhere between three and eight miles per day.
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| Telegraph poles alongside a railroad line. |
As you might imagine, supplies had to be shipped long distances to complete the western portions. The wire and insulators were manufactured back east, shipped around Cape Horn, and arrived in San Francisco by boat. The logs for telegraph poles were sourced from Salt Lake City, Utah, since the Great Plains had no trees to offer. All items were placed on oxen-drawn wagons and carted out to the end of the line where the crews were working.
On October 24, 1861, the crew building the line from San Francisco westward finally reached Salt Lake City, a few days after the eastern crew had arrived. The transcontinental telegraph line was complete—and Brigham Young sent the first telegraph to San Francisco, announcing its completion. The first telegraph message, sent by a California Supreme Court Justice to President Abraham Lincoln, left San Francisco on 7:40 PM on October 24—and reached the President in Washington, D.C., the following morning at 11:30 AM. Less than 18 hours for a message to travel from coast to coast. This was a huge improvement over any other means of messaging in that day.
The telegraph continued as a viable means of communication through the early half of the 20th Century.
It’s Your Turn: Had you ever given thought to what it took to create the network of telegraph lines that connected America? What did you find most interesting about this piece of America’s history?
Jennifer Uhlarik discovered western novels at twelve when she swiped the only “horse” book from her brother’s bookshelf. Across the next decade, she devoured westerns and fell in love with the genre. While attaining a B.A. in writing from the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. She has finaled in and won numerous writing competitions and appeared on various best-seller lists. Besides writing, she’s been a business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, a historical researcher, a publisher, and a full-time homemaker. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband and fur children.
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