What inventions sped up communication beginning in the late 19th century?
1 Answer
The key revolution in communications in the first half of the 19th Century was the invention of the telegraph.
Explanation:
In the late 18th Century, a variety of discoveries and inventions in the field of electricity led to ideas that the transmission of signals could be possible -- eventually. Governments and banks were interested, as both the Napoleonic Wars, and the growing sophistication of the financial industry were generating a need for fast reliable communications. However, the first attempts at telegraphic signalling (in 1816) were limited to a couple of hundred metres.
Mechanical semaphores had appeared in the Napoleonic Wars and there had been major improvements in practical codes as well -- to speed up transmission of orders in naval fleets, for example. But Mechanical semaphore systems were expensive and required a line of sight from one tower to the next. Fog or snow could interrupt a system for days.
Finally, in 1837 more practical long-range telegraph designs appeared. British and American inventors working seperately on both sides of the Atlantic (William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in the UK, and Samuel Morse in the US). The Cooke-Wheatstone system was more complex, but by 1840 was practically tied to the first British railroads. Morse's telegraph and his code system as more versatile and reliable, and eventually became the new standard.
The partnership of the telegraph and railway operations enable both to achieve peak efficiencies; but the telegraph was revolutionary in every field. Newspapers, meteorologists, police detectives, generals in the field -- all found hundreds of new applications for the new technology.
By 1861, Americans could sent a telegram from Boston to San Francisco. The year before had seen the first working undersea cables cross the English Channel and the Irish Sea. By 1866, the first telegraph cables were laid across the Atlantic Ocean. By 1902, the entire world was encircled in telegraph cables.
For the first time, messages could reliably travel almost at the speed of light.
