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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.
The telegraph's nearly-instant transmission of messages across continents – and between continents – had widespread social and economic impacts. The electric telegraph led to Guglielmo Marconi's invention of wireless telegraphy, the first means of radiowave telecommunication, which he began in 1894. [5]
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.
The Chappe telegraph was a French semaphore telegraph system invented by Claude Chappe in the early 1790s. The system was composed of towers placed every 5 to 15 kilometers. Coded messages were sent from tower to tower, with transmission being handled by tower operators using specially designed telescopes.
The telegraph arose from a collaboration between William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, best known to schoolchildren from the eponymous Wheatstone bridge. Their collaboration was not a happy one because their objectives differed. Cooke was an inventor and entrepreneur who wished to patent and commercially exploit his inventions.
October 1872: Australia is linked to the world system by a submarine telegraph line between Darwin and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). 1874: Thomas Edison sells his invention of quadruplex telegraph to Western Union for $10,000. It allows a total of four separate signals to be transmitted and received on a single wire at the same time (two ...
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After establishing his reputation as a portrait painter, Morse, in his middle age, contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs.
Sir Charles Wheatstone (/ ˈ w iː t s t ə n /; [1] 6 February 1802 – 19 October 1875) was an English physicist and inventor best known for his contributions to the development of the Wheatstone bridge, originally invented by Samuel Hunter Christie, which is used to measure an unknown electrical resistance, and as a major figure in the development of telegraphy.