The “nineteenth century internet” might not impress
middle-grade students today, but it provided the first means of transmitting
messages around the world in virtually real-time. This marvelous invention, which
eventually evolved into the present-day internet, was the telegraph. Between these
two mass-communication methods came the telephone, radio, television,
computers, and satellites. When I was a middle-grade student and an active member of the Boy Scouts of America, one of the skills we strove to learn was Morse Code. Even after I went into the US Army in 1960, telegraphic systems were used to send messages around the world. The story of the evolution of communications is told
nicely by Janice Parker in Messengers, Morse Code, and Modems.
In the early 1800s, several inventors, most notably in
England, were experimenting with harnessing the power of electricity in order
to send a signal over a wire. But the generally accepted “inventor” of a
successful telegraph system is American painter Samuel F. B. Morse. He had been
fascinated with the study of electricity as a youth, but it was not until he
reached middle age that he embarked seriously on the idea of creating the
telegraph. At the age of 41, after studying art in France, Morse sailed back
home in 1832. Conversations with fellow passengers about the possible ways of
using electricity to aid communications stimulated his interest. He immediately
went to work on the endeavor that resulted in successfully demonstrating his
invention at the United States Supreme Court in 1844. The message he tapped out
to prove the telegraph could work is well known to American school children:
“What hath God wrought?” A good biography of Morse’s life and work is contained
in The Invention of the Telegraph and Telephone in American History by Anita
Louise McCormick.
The original cross-country telegraph line followed the route
of the overland stagecoach. When President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad
Act of 1862 on July 1 of that year, the construction program included a
telegraph line to parallel the railroad. When the Union
Pacific joined with the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869,
cross-country stagecoach travel ended, and telegraph traffic switched to the
new lines adjacent to the iron rails. One of the most famous transmissions via the telegraph to
reach all points around the country, and even points in Europe via the recently completed undersea cable, was “Done.” That simple message signaled the driving of the golden spike and the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Andrew J. Russell's famous photograph shows a spectator standing
on the crossbeam of the telegraph pole above the ceremony.
I write
about this historic telegraphic event in Golden Spike, The Iron Horse
Chronicles—Book Three. This book is yet to be published, but the first two
books in my trilogy (Eagle Talons and Bear Claws) contain numerous scenes
depicting the important use of the first “internet” as work progressed to
extend the railroad from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, in the late 1860s.
