Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The timeline of North American telegraphy is a chronology of notable events in the history of the electric telegraphy in the United States and Canada, including the rapid spread of telegraphic communications starting from 1844 and completion of the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861.
The word telegraph (from Ancient Greek: τῆλε 'at a distance' and γράφειν 'to write') was coined by the French inventor of the semaphore telegraph, Claude Chappe, who also coined the word semaphore. [2] A telegraph is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy.
In 1838, Steinheil installed a telegraph along the Nuremberg–Fürth railway line, built in 1835 as the first German railroad, which was the first earth-return telegraph put into service. By 1837, William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone had co-developed a telegraph system which used a number of needles on a board that could be moved to ...
Cooke and Wheatstone had their first commercial success with a telegraph installed in 1838 on the Great Western Railway over the 13 miles (21 km) from Paddington station to West Drayton. Indeed, this was the first commercial telegraph in the world. [10] This was a five-needle, six-wire [9] system. The cables were originally installed ...
Another electrical telegraph was independently developed and patented in the United States in 1837 by Samuel Morse. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signaling alphabet with Morse. America's first telegraph was sent by Morse on January 6, 1838, across 2 miles (3 km) of wiring.
The telegraph line immediately made the Pony Express obsolete, which officially ceased operations two days later. The overland telegraph line was operated until 1869, when it was replaced by a multi-line telegraph that had been constructed alongside the route of the first transcontinental railroad.
The history of telecommunication began with the use of smoke signals and drums in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In the 1790s, the first fixed semaphore systems emerged in Europe. However, it was not until the 1830s that electrical telecommunication systems started to appear. This article details the history of telecommunication and the ...
With the Chappe telegraph, it took 2 hours. [9] Construction of the system began in the early 1790s and proceeded rapidly after that. It continued to be used for decades, but its decline began when the first electric telegraph line, based on International Morse code, was set up in 1845. The last signal from a Chappe telegraph was sent in 1854.