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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.
Morse patented the system and tried to persuade Congress to adopt it as a government-owned and operated system like the post office. However, the Democrats in power were hostile to federal spending. In 1837, Morse obtained funding from Congress to build a telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore, a distance of about forty miles.
The word telegraph alone generally refers to an electrical telegraph. Wireless telegraphy is transmission of messages over radio with telegraphic codes. Contrary to the extensive definition used by Chappe, Morse argued that the term telegraph can strictly be applied only to systems that transmit and record messages at a
Installation of the lines and poles from Washington to Baltimore began on April 1, 1844, using chestnut poles 23 feet (7 m) high spaced 300 feet (90 m) apart, for a total of about 700 poles. [6] Two 16- gauge copper wires were installed; they were insulated with cotton thread, shellac, and a mixture of "beeswax, resin, linseed oil, and asphalt."
The patented invention proved lucrative and by 1851 telegraph lines in the United States spanned over 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometres). [13] Morse's most important technical contribution to this telegraph was the simple and highly efficient Morse Code , co-developed with Vail, which was an important advance over Wheatstone's more complicated ...
Furthermore, this order relinquished control of all lines seized by the government in the North and sold the lines constructed by the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps to private telegraph companies. [28] Once control of the telegraph lines were turned over to the telegraph companies, the operators were discharged one by one.
Monument in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, marking the approximate location where the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed.. The first transcontinental telegraph (completed October 24, 1861) was a line that connected the existing telegraph network in the eastern United States to a small network in California, by means of a link between Omaha, Nebraska and Carson City, Nevada ...
Depiction of the construction of the first Transcontinental Telegraph, with a Pony Express rider passing below. According to Will Bagley, "The bill authorized an annual loan of forty thousand dollars for ten years, a maximum fee of three dollars for a single dispatch of ten words, and the use of a quarter-section of public land for every fifteen miles of line to subsidize the building of a ...