100 YEARS OF SERVICE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 202, 11 September 1937, Page 14

100 YEARS OF SERVICE

Advent of the Telegraph

Electric telegraphy in Britain has now celebrated ite hundredth birthday. July 25 was the day that the modern telegraph celebrated its centenary in London, and, strictly speaking, all users of telegrams, cables, tape machines and teleprinters ought to have raised a respectful hat to the railways. The connection? Well, had it not been for the railways, the electric telegraph might have taken a great deal longer to develop in Britain. The railways sponsored telegraphy — they were in need of a method of instantaneous communication between stations. The railways made it popular with the public. The railways put up the lines the post office later used. It was on the evening of July 25; 1837, that-Prof. C. Wheatstone, sitting alone in a room near the booking office at Euston terminus, London, exchanged instantaneous messages with his partner, Mr. W. F. Cooke, surrounded by excited rail-Toad diroctors in a room at Camden Town station, a mile away. Electric telegraph systems had been shown before, but it is claimed that the Wheatstone-Cooke instrunient was the first practical instrument. It was certainly the first to be put to commercial use. Following the trial between Euston and Camden Town, the electric telegraph became the pride of the railways, eventually to revolutionise mcthods of communication for Ihe country as a whole. The electric telegraph did not really attract public attention until a criminal was caught with its assistance in 1S40. In 1S45 tbouSands of sightscers poured to Paddington terminus to see Ihe telegraph working. "The Wonder of the Age," a poster announced.

"An Exhibition admitted by its nu« merous Visitors to be the most' interest* ing and ATTRACTIVE of any in this great Metropolis. In the list of Visitors are the illustrious names of several of the Crowned Heads of Europe, and nearly the whole of the Nobility of England. "The Electric Telegraph is unlimited in the nature and extent of its c'omi munications, ' ' the enthusiastic postsr added. "By its extraordinary agenc.y a person in London could converse with another at New York^ or at any other place however distant, as easily and neariy as rapidly as if both parties were in the same room. "Questions proposed by Visitors will bo asked by moans of this Apparatus, and answers thereto will instantaneously be returned by a person 20 miles off, who will also at their request, ring o bell or fire a canuon, in an incredibly short space of time, after the signal for his doing so has been given." Visitors probably thought that the statement that it would bo possible to telegraph to New York was merely an advertiser's exaggeration. In fact, it is probable that the person who wrote the copy for the poster did not realisa that he had made a true prophccy, for at the time at which he was writing the telegraph was only used over distancee of about 20 miles, and it was not untily 1S49 that a cable was laid out in the sea and tho first submarine niessage Avas sent 85 miles from a railway steamboat to London. In 1870 the British Government took over all the private telegraph companies, and the post office telegraphs came into being. Before the eentury closed 90,000,000 messages a year were being sent. This total receded after tho dovelopmeut of the telephone. •