Telegraph, Telegram

Global communication was forever transformed with the telegraph. A messenger no longer needed to carry a message from one place to another, because this new device had conquered space and changed time. The telegraph and its telegram extended our sensory systems' nerve endings beyond their terminal branches and upgraded the limits of local life to a scale of global proportion. Senders encoded their words into the dashes and dots of Morse code—named after the tool's inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse—for receivers to decode. Although media historians continue to disagree on the exact time and place of the telegraph's birth, the apparatus nonetheless developed in two phases between 1830 and 1930: initially on national soil and then across international seas.

The first phase of national development required the construction of networks in western Europe and the United States during the second quarter of the 19th century. In the United States, the Western Union Telegraph Company acquired dozens of separate firms previously identified by geographic regions to minimize competition. The conglomerate quickly became the largest telegraph group in the world, after an investment in the International Ocean Telegraph Company, and continued in that position well into the 20th century. North Atlantic agents thereby controlled the wiring of the world and related processes of expansion and interaction. Clickable keys and electric wires began to punctuate communication practices.

A telegraph cable stretched across the Atlantic Ocean during the second phase of international development. Insulating material known as gutta-percha prevented the transatlantic cable from short-circuiting and enabled the sharing of telegrams between North America, England, and Europe in the 1860s. Within South America and the Caribbean, the River Plate Telegraph Company bridged Argentina and Uruguay in 1865, and Key West communicated with Havana to the amazement of an enthusiastic public 2 years later. The Key West–Havana line extended from Cuba to Jamaica and Panama by 1870 and, later, included Puerto Rico and Trinidad. Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Hong Kong, and Tokyo connected with South America in 1874, which was 2 years after the Siberian line crossed from Europe to Japan.

Elsewhere in the world, London's market stability made it an attractive center for the telegraph industry. Indeed, Greenwich was selected as the international meridian, in part because of its proximity to London. Yet, peripheral powers in France, Spain, Germany, Russia, and China challenged the centrality of British control. China, for instance, resisted the encroachment of British engineers and their imperial instrument by cutting cables that connected it with England during the Boxer Rebellion. British telegraph operators also attempted to link London with Calcutta but could not resolve border disputes between the Ottoman Empire and Iran. The telegraph was regulated privately rather than publicly because cables crossed countries with different political philosophies and cultural histories.

Britain's desire for power in the production of news recalled a set of colonial practices that predated the American Revolution. Just as the distance between England and the United States seemingly shortened after the telegraph, local communities incorporated themselves into a global village with the news wire. Journalists practiced an economy of expression that left out the details found in newspapers and magazines. The function of early wire reports—to provide the essential facts—reflected the telegraph's technical form and its demand for brevity. By the last quarter of the 19th century, the Associated Press had leased its first telegraph wire.

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