Short lectures
in Media
History
Chapter Seven
Telephone and Telegraph
www.revolutionsincommunication.com
The electronic revolution
Rapid communication was divine: Nike, Hermes
and Mercury carryied messages for the gods
 For mortals, it moved at the speed of a running
horse or fast ship.
 Example: Battle of New Orleans fought Jan. 8,
1815, but peace treaty signed in Paris days
before Christmas 1814. Seven weeks.
 Yet by 1866, same message one hour.

Telegraph & telephone
as mass media
Both known primarily for person-toperson communication
 But both were backbone for mass
communication as well

◦ Telegraph allowed “wire services”
 Associated Press in US, Reuters in UK
◦ Telephone allowed radio networks
 NBC, CBS in US, BBC in UK

“Convergence” is a constant condition in
mass media history.
Cycles of technology development
Open – experimentation, competition,
development
 Closed – stakeholders close ranks with
patents around profitable activities
 Alternative – Monopolies become
stagnant, inventors seek ways to
circumvent

Optical / mechanical
“telegraph”
Claude Chappe developed
semaphore system for
French revolutionary army
1792
 “Telegraph” also used to
describe naval signals,
British optical system

Electric signaling
Electric phenomena
fascinated scientists 1700s
– 1800s
 Steven Gray first sent
electric current 700 feet
through a line in London in
1727.
 Benjamin Franklin famous
for experiments with
electricity 1750s.

First telegraph in UK 1837
William Cooke and
Charles Wheatstone
patented electric
telegraph in 1837
 A five wire system,
difficult to build and
hard to use.
 Morse worked with a
single grounded wire

Samuel Morse
Motivation: Wife died before message
could reach him – Led to search for
better message system
 Morse identified software as the key
problem, not hardware

◦ Tried number system for words
◦ Tried signals on paper t ape
◦ Eventually tried dot – dash signal set based on
letter frequency
Morse code based
on print technology
Most frequently used letters were given
the simplest corresponding code

Typical type font, printers stocked 12,000 Es and 9,000 Ts.
◦E= .

T= -
Printers also stocked 400 Qs and 200 Zs because they were rarely used:
◦ Q = --.-
Z = --..
◦


An elegant software solution to the hardware problem
that others like Cooke and Wheatstone had not really
solved.
Morse code adopted internationally by 1865
__ ___
._. …
.
“It is obvious, at the slightest glance, that
this mode of instantaneous
communication must inevitably become
an instrument of immense power, to be
wielded for good or for evil . . .”
—Samuel Morse, 1838.
Morse wanted telegraph to be
“nationalized” - owned by
government.
European nations did just that, but the
US allowed telegraph to become a
monopoly called Western Union
Not everyone was impressed…
The telegraph is little more than an
“improved means to an unimproved end.”
We are in great haste to construct a
magnetic telegraph from Maine to
Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be,
have nothing important to
communicate.
Henry David Thoreau, 1854, Walden
News before & after
Before the telegraph:
If the exhibition of the most brilliant valor, of the
excess of courage, and of a daring which would have
reflected luster on the best days of chivalry can afford
full consolation for the disaster of today, we can have
no reason to regret the melancholy loss which we
sustained in a contest with a savage and barbarian
enemy. (William Howard Russell, The Times, London,
November 13, 1854)
News sent by telegraph:
Our troops, after taking three batteries and gaining a
great victory at Bull Run, were eventually repulsed,
and commenced
a retreat on Washington. (Henry Villard, New York
Herald, July 22, 1861)
Associated Press formed
•
•
•
•
1846 express news from
Mexican war
1848 Harbor News Assn (NY
city)
Became a monopoly with
Western Union telegraph
company in 1860s
Blocked competition and
managed news
Telegraph lines link US, UK
First lines laid
down in 1858
 Permanent lines in
place by 1866
 Special AP –
Reuters deal 1890s

European wire services


Unlike US, telegraph was nationalized
Charles Louis Havas – France, 1835
◦ Became Agence France Press 1945 after WWII

Paul Reuter (Havas employee) – UK
◦ Formed Reuter’s in London 1851
◦ Major international wire service today

Bernard Wolff (also Havas employee)
◦ Formed Wolffs in Berlin 1849; Nazis destroyed it 1930
◦ Replaced by Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) in 1945

Spanish wire service EFE formed 1939
AP criticized, investigated
• Congress -- 96 bills, 48 committee reports on AP
and Western Union, 1866 – 1910
• AP monopoly meant that the only news of regional
controversy would come from biased sources.
• Cartoon (above) from The Masses pictures AP
poisoning the well of news about the West Virginia
mine wars around 1912.
Opposition to monopoly
•
•
•
•
1890s – 1915, states &
federal gov’t pass “antitrust” laws
AP-Western Union was one
of dozens
United Press (Scripps),
International News (Hearst)
formed to compete with AP
1907
AP loses anti-trust suit 1945
Invention of telephone
Main idea was to circumvent
Western Union monopoly
• Gardiner Hubbard was the
“national nemesis” of Western
Union monopoly
• He also financed Alexander
Graham Bell telephone
experiments in 1870s
• (Hubbard was Bell’s father-inlaw)
• Bell telephone patent filed
1876
•
Famous last words

“The idea is idiotic on the face of it… Why
would any person want to use this ungainly and
impractical device when he can send a
messenger to the telegraph office and have a
clear written message sent to any large city in
the United State States?”
◦ Western Union to Alexander Graham Bell, 1876
Telephone also a monopoly




From 1890s – 1980s, AT&T had forced most
competitors out of business.
Public relations campaign helped stave off a
breakup until 1980s
Kingsbury Commitment with US Justice
Dept. allowed AT&T to continue as a
regulated monopoly.
The deal also forced Western Union to carry
competing wire services such as United
Press and International Press at the same
rate, allowing them to compete with the
Associated Press.
Public relations campaign
claimed telephone was a
“natural” monopoly
By 1912, telephone was
regulated rather than
broken up into
competing companies
By 1982 phone services
were broken up into
regional carriers with
much lower rates
Bell in 1922, listening to radio