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.
Sept 1837: Morse employs Alfred Vail to improve his telegraph from demonstration purposes for a share of future patent rights.[1]
Sept 1837: Samuel Morse files for a patent for his electrical telegraph in the United States.[1]
6 Jan 1838: Samuel Morse sends his first public demonstration message over two miles of wire at Speedwell Ironworks in New Jersey. Morse also demonstrates his invention to the Franklin Institute and President Martin Van Buren in early 1838.[1]
April 1838: Congressman Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith proposes to give $30,000 for Morse to build a line to demonstrate the telegraph, but the bill does not pass.[1]
21 October 1843: Originally Morse decided to lay his wire underground, and asked Ezra Cornell to lay the line using a special cable-laying plow that Cornell had developed. Wire began to be laid in Baltimore on October 21, 1843, but the project was stopped after 15 km of wire was laid because the line was failing. Morse learned that Cooke and Wheatstone in England were now using poles for their lines, and he decided to follow that lead.[4]
1844
1 April 1844: Work begins in Washington on laying the line to Baltimore using poles. They used chestnut poles of seven meters in height, and 60 meters apart. Two wires were laid, Number 16 copper wire, covered by cotton thread with shellac, and a covering mixture of "beeswax, resin, linseed oil, and asphalt.".[4]
1 May 1844: Test of line conveys news of the Whig Party's nomination of Henry Clay for U.S. President from the party's convention in Baltimore to the Capitol Building in Washington.
24 May 1844: Morse's first message over the Baltimore-Washington telegraph line, "What hath God wrought!" is transmitted, chosen from the Bible for Morse by Annie G. Ellsworth, because she knew Morse was religious.[4]
Summer 1844: To generate interest in building a line from New York to Boston, Cornell strings short exhibition line in Boston, from School Street and over Old City Hall to Sudbury Street, which generates public interest, but no investors. Cornell then sets up a similar exhibition in New York.[5]
Spread of telegraphic lines
1845
The first telegraph officeNovember 14, 1845 report in New York Herald on telegraph lines coming into operation.
1 April 1845: First public telegraph office opens in Washington, D.C., under the control of the Postmaster-General.[4] The public now had to pay for messages, which were no longer free.[5]
September 1845: Henry O'Reilly commences building line intended to extend from Philadelphia to St. Louis. Work on first segment begins in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, heading east to Philadelphia.[8]
October 1845: Samuel Colt partners with William Robinson (a New York book dealer) to form the New York and Offing Electric Telegraph Association. A line is laid from an observation tower built on Coney Island to Manhattan to get news from shipping traffic to the New York Mercantile Exchange more quickly. The first line laid across the East River from Brooklyn by Colt on October 23 or 24 quickly fails. The northern terminus of the line becomes the Fulton Ferry in Brooklyn, with news then ferried across the river. A second line across the East River at Hell Gate was operational by March 1846.[5][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]
November 1845: November 14, 1845 New York Herald notes another short planned line, the "Boston Marine Line", which, similar to the New York Offing Line would be a line from Nantasket outside Boston to inner Boston to transmit news from incoming ships.[24] In a letter to the Herald dated February 23, 1846, Ezra Cornell noted that the Boston line had not yet been put into operation.[25]
November 1845: In the fall of 1845, the Magnetic Telegraph Company commences building a line from Philadelphia to New York. By early November, a 14 mile segment from Philadelphia to Norristown, Pennsylvania had been laid, and opened due to great public interest in the work.[5]
Map shows extent of operational lines by the end of 1846. At the start of the year, there were only four short lines in operation: the original Baltimore-D.C. line, the Buffalo-Lockport line, a short stretch in Philadelphia, and the New York-Coney Island line. By year's end, lines ran from Washington to Boston, west to Pittsburgh, and north from New York City to Albany and west to Buffalo. Rapid expansion was continuing.
1846
8 January 1846: Line from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Lancaster, Pennsylvania opens. The first telegram from Harrisburg to Lancaster was "Why don't you write, you rascals?"[28] The line did not yet connect to Philadelphia, and only stayed in service until March 1, 1846; Harrisburg service restarted on October 5, 1846.[29]
21 February 1846: Boston to Lowell, Massachusetts line opens, with Sarah Bagley (generally credited as the first female telegraph operator) at Lowell end.[5][6]
7 April 1846: The New York and Offing Company (operating its short line to Coney Island for shipping news) opens an office in Manhattan in the New York Post building.[10]
5 June 1846: With completion of link between Baltimore and Philadelphia, line from New York City to Washington, D.C. by Magnetic Telegraph Company is now operational.[31][40][41][36]
27 June 1846: Commercial line between New York City and Boston completed by F.O.J. Smith. On July 4, the next steamer from Europe to Boston (the Britannia) arrives. Does not appear that telegraph was used, and Herald reports how news traveled from Boston to New York in 10 hours. Next steamer (Cambria) arrives in Boston on July 18 and the New York papers use the new telegraph line.[40][31]
20 January 1849: After many trials, the line from Baltimore to New York City is finally extended across the Hudson River at Jersey City.[62]
13 February 1849: Line from Boston reaches Saint John, New Brunswick with completion of leg to Calais, Maine, and this spurs the start of the Nova Scotia Pony Express to take news from European steamers' first port of call in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The ship Europa that reached Halifax on February 21, 1849, was the first to carry news that used the pony express.[31][80]
1856: Service within Oregon extended south to Corvallis. Link to San Francisco not completed until 1864 (see timeline).[84]
1856: In the far northeast, submarine cable is laid across the Cabot Straight from Aspy Bay in Nova Scotia to Cape Ray in Newfoundland. A land line from Cape Ray is also run to St. John's. This eventually led to news boats being stationed off Cape Race to get news from European steamers before they reached Halifax.[85][86][87]
Spread to continental and intercontinental service
16 Aug 1858: The first transatlantic telegraph cable between North America and Europe starts operation, but fails after three weeks; a reliable new cable is not established until 1866.
3 April 1860 The Pony Express starts operations, running from St. Joseph, Missouri (where the rail and telegraph lines from the east ended) to San Francisco (Sacramento to San Francisco leg by steamer, rest by horse).
20 July 1861: In the west, a California newspaper reports that line has now reached fifty miles east of Fort Churchill (in Nevada). The State Telegraph Company was sending one of their best operators to the eastern end so that news from the Pony Express could be immediately transmitted, and this plan would continue as the line advanced east. The portion of the line to be constructed west from Salt Lake City was starting to haul poles along the route and waiting arrival of wire from the East. In the East, the paper reported that wire should be up to Julesburg (now far northeast Colorado), two hundred miles west of Kearney, Nebraska by August 1.[101]
25 July 1861: In west, transcontinental line reaches Middle Gate Station on the Pony Express line, 75 miles east of Fort Churchill.[102]
5 August 1861: A team laying wire reaches Fort Laramie from the east.[103]
21 August 1861: California newspaper reports that its latest news from the Pony Express came from the Willow telegraph station 50 miles west of Fort Kearney, and then traveled by horse to the Dry Creek station, 168 miles east of Fort Churchill. The total gap between ends of the line was now about 1,159 miles, not counting the unconnected section under construction from Salt Lake.[104]
17 September 1861: In west, telegraph line is operational to Diamond Springs (Nevada) station on Pony Express. Messages from San Francisco can now reach New York in six days.[105]
20 September 1861: Eastern line operational to a point 120 miles west of Fort Kearney.[106]
28 September 1861: California newspaper reports that line from Fort Kearney, Nebraska has reached about 200 miles west to Julesburg. Another eastern work team has reached 300 miles east from Salt Lake City, only about 200 miles west of Julesburg. In the west, the line has been completed to Ruby Valley (now Nevada, then Utah Territory), somewhat over 200 miles to reach Salt Lake. (The distances reported in the article are not exact.) The total gap in telegraphic connection between west and east is now about 550 miles, which the Pony Express can normally cover in less than four days.[107]
2 October 1861: Newspaper report shows eastern line now operating through Sweetwater Station (near Independence Rock in Wyoming).[108]
17 October 1861: A link between line headed east from Salt Lake City is joined to the eastern line at Fort Bridger. Creighton telegraphs his wife "in a few days the two oceans will be united."[109]
18 October 1861: Brigham Young sends first official telegraph message from Salt Lake City to the eastern United States. It is sent to Jeptha Wade, the president of the Pacific Telegraph Company. On the same day, Frank Fuller, acting governor of Utah, sent a message to President Lincoln.[110]
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 signals in each direction.)
October 1902: The first trans-Pacific line links Brisbane, Australia to Vancouver, Canada (via Fiji and Norfolk Island).[116]
^ abcdefgHarlow, Alvin F. Old Wires and New Waves, p. 105-06 (Summer 1844 Boston line), p. 111 (Philadelphia to Norristown), 114 (Boston to Lowell) (1936), 172 (Coney Island line)
^(24 October 1845). The Offing Telegraph, New York Herald (reports that Colt succeeded in laying pipe across the river on the prior day, October 23)
^Brooklyn Affairs, New York Daily Tribune, p. 2, col. 6 ("Mr. Colt has abandoned his project of carrying the Offing Telegraph Wire across the bottom of the river, and it will not be carried over on poles from Fulton Ferry.")
^(9 April 1846). [1], New York Herald, p. 4, col. 6 bottom third (advertising new crossing of East River at Hell Gate)
^Scientific American (November 27, 1845), Vol. I, No. 11, p. 2, col. 5 near bottom ("Since the Telegraph from Buffalo to Lockport has been in operation the Lockport papers published western news twelve hours in advance of the mail.")
^The Magnetic Telegraph, Scientific American (December 18, 1845), Vol. I, No.1 14, p. 3, col. 4 (anecdotes about early use of Buffalo-Lockport line)
^(10 November 1845). The Telegraph between ..., New York Daily Tribune (reporting that line between Lockport and Buffalo "was put in operation yesterday afternoon ..." as reported in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser on unlisted date)
^(18 November 1845). Magnetic Telegraph - Buffalo and Lockport, p. 1, col. 6 (reprint from November 15 Buffalo Advertiser about breaks in wire and poles being sawed down)
^(4 December 1845). [2], New-York Daily Tribune, col. 3, near bottom ("The Magnetic Telegraph of Messrs. Hudson & Smith, from Nantasket Head to the Merchants' Exchange, is now nearly completed, and will be put in immediate operation.")
^Scientific American (12 February 1846), p. 2 (reporting on Albany-Utica and Philadelphia-Newark, and delay to New York due to Hudson River)
^Scientific American (February 5, 1846), p. 2 col. 5 ("We are informed that the Telegraph between Albany and Utica is finished and has commenced operations. Several other lines are progressing.")
^(30 September 1846). Editorial Miscellany, Northern Christian Advocate (Auburn, New York), p. 107, col.1 ("The Magnetic Telegraph from Auburn to Ithaca got into successful operation on the 16th inst.")
^(2 December 1846). Note, p. 2, col. 1, New York Post ("The telegraph wires have been extended from Ithaca to Elmira.")
