Telegraphy

Running footmen were employed by the Austrian nobility down to the close of the last century. Mrs. St George, describing her visit to Vienna at that time, expresses her dislike of the custom, as cruel and unnecessary. 'These unhappy people,' she says, 'always precede the carriage of their masters in town, and sometimes even to the suburbs. They seldom live above three or four years, and generally die of consumption. Fatigue and disease are painted in their pallid and drawn features; but, like victims, they are crowned with flowers, and adorned with tinsel…

In our country, the running footman was occasionally employed upon simple errands when unusual dispatch was required. In the neighbourhood of various great houses in Scotland, the country people still tell stories illustrative of the singular speed which these men attained. For example: the Earl of Home, residing at Hume Castle in Berwickshire, had occasion to send his foot-man to Edinburgh one evening on important business. Descending to the hall in the morning, he found the man asleep on a bench, and, thinking he had neglected his duty, prepared to chastise him, but found, to his surprise, that the man had been to Edinburgh (thirty-five miles) and back, with his business sped, since the past evening.
— Robert Chambers (1802 – 1871), Book of Days, 1869.

Then the cane [glass rod] being rubbed, and the leaf-brass being held under the ivory ball, the electric vertue passed by the line of communication to the other end of the gallery, and returned again to the ivory ball which attracted the leaf-brass and suspended it as before.
— Stephen Gray (1666 (?) – 1736), Philosophical Transactions, vol 6 (1731), published 1733.

The efforts made with a view to long-distance telephoning have already proved quite satisfactory in a commercial way, and promise excellent results. Conversation has been conducted between Cleveland and New York, and is now daily carried on between New York and Boston to a limited extent. The great difficulty in long-distance telephoning is the loss of the current by static induction on the earth and wires in close proximity. If a single wire could be placed sufficiently high as to amply clear all the mountain tops, one could whisper around the world with perfect ease. One thing, however, is now certain: that the time is close at hand when the telephone will be perfectly successful in an unbroken circuit for a distance of at least 300 miles. It is probable that by means of repeating stations communication can be had over all parts of the United States.
— Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931), Scientific American 1885.

We have applied the term rays of electric force to the phenomena which we have investigated. We may perhaps further designate them as rays of light of very great wavelength. The experiments described appear to me, at any rate, eminently adapted to remove any doubt as to the identity of light, radiant heat, and electromagnetic wave motion. I believe that from now on we shall have greater confidence in making use of the advantages which this identity enables us to derive both in the study of optics and electricity.
— Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857 – 1894), conclusion to his 1888 paper.

Upon this I concluded that when the electric vertue came to the loop that suspended from the beam, it went up the line to the beam …
— Stephen Gray (1666 (?) – 1736), Philosophical Transactions, vol 6 (1731), published 1733.

What hath God wrought!
— Samuel Morse (1791-1872), the first ‘Morse code’ message, 24 May, 1844 (from Numbers, 23:23).

An elegant building of white freestone, called Macquarie Tower, on the southern side of the entrance to Port Jackson, the entrance to which it points out by day and night, the revolving light being visible at ten or twelve leagues distance: by its side, is a telegraph and signal post, to communicate to Sydney every thing relating to vessels entering or leaving the harbour. The height of the point from the sea is 277 feet, and the tower 76, being together, 353 feet; it stands lat. 33° 51’ 40” south long. 151° 16’ 50”, east from Greenwich. The tower, from the softness of the materials, is supposed to be unsafe, and has been bound with iron.
— Burford, Robert, Description of a View of the Town of Sydney, New South Wales; the Harbour of Port Jackson, and Surrounding Country, now exhibiting in the Panorama, Leicester-Square. London: J. and C. Adlard, 1829, and Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1978, 12.

The importance of the telegraph to the colonies cannot be over-rated, and the anxiety it created can only be understood by those who have watched the avidity with which news from England is received in all her dependencies. Australia had hitherto been dependent on one arrival monthly from England, – and on a very little credited monthly dispatch reaching her shores via New York, San Francisco and New Zealand.
— Trollope, Anthony (1815-1882), Australia and New Zealand, London: 1873, 690.

In times gone by, when there was no communication by cable, news from other countries only reached Australia at long intervals. Old pressmen have often told me of the adventures they had in endeavouring to be first in the field when a ship arrived from England.

It was no uncommon thing at that time for representatives of leading papers to take boats and row to Sydney Heads to meet the long-expected vessel. There was a desperate struggle to be first on board the vessel to secure the latest files of English papers, correspondence etc., and to interview the skipper and other officers on board.

Now all that is changed. The cable flashes the latest intelligence from one side of the world to the other, and anything of importance that has taken place in the old world is soon learned in the new.
— Nat Gould, Town and Bush. London 1896, Ringwood: Penguin, 1974, pages 257-258

Across the wires the electric message came:
‘He is no better, he is much the same.’
— Alfred Austin (1835-1913) On the Illness of the Prince of Wales (attributed)

In the recent discovery of Hertz that the action of electro-magnetism is propagated in waves like light — in his confirmation of Maxwell’s theory that light is only a special phase of electro-magnetic action — we have a result which, if of striking interest to pure science, seems yet to have no immediate practical application. But that man would indeed be a bold dogmatist who would venture to assert that the results which may ultimately flow from this discovery of Hertz’s will not, in a generation or two, do more to revolutionize life than the frogs’ legs of Galvani achieved when they led to the perfection of the electric telegraph.
— Karl Pearson (1857 – 1936), The Grammar of Science, 30-31.

To give him credit, Pearson was soon to see that this statement had been overtaken by the work of Guglielmo Marconi, a point which he noted in later editions, but it was probably two generations after he wrote his words before television really began to revolutionise the world.

At the time (twelve years ago) when communication was first established by means of radiotelegraphy between England and France, much discussion and speculation took place as to whether or not wireless telegraphy would be practicable for much longer distances than those then covered, and a somewhat general opinion prevailed that the curvature of the Earth would be an insurmountable obstacle to long distance transmission, in the same way as it was, and is, an obstacle to signalling over considerable distances by means of light flashes … .

[I believe] that those who anticipated difficulties in consequence of the shape of our planet had not taken sufficient account of the particular effect of the earth connection to both transmitter and receiver, which earth connection introduced effects of conduction which were generally at that time overlooked … .

In January 1901 some successful experiments were carried out between two points on the South Coast of England 186 miles [300 kilometres] apart, i. e. St Catherine’s Point (Isle of Wight) and The Lizard in Cornwall.

The total height of these stations above sea level did not exceed 100 metres, whereas to clear the curvature of the Earth a height of more than 1600 metres at each end would have been necessary.

The results obtained from these tests, which at that time constituted a record distance, seemed to indicate that electric waves produced in the manner I had adopted would most probably be able to make their way around the curvature of the Earth, and that therefore even at great distances, such as those dividing America from Europe, the factor of the Earth’s curvature would not constitute an insurmountable barrier to the extension of telegraphy through space.

[This belief] led me in 1900 to decide to attempt the experiment of testing whether or not it would be possible to detect electric waves over a distance of 4000 kilometres, which, if successful, would immediately prove the possibility of telegraphing without wires between Europe and America.

A station erected at Cape Cod, not far from New York was built, but damaged in a storm, so a temporary receiving station was set up in Newfoundland. The transmitter, in Cornwall, was powered by a 25 kilowatt generator.

The tests were commenced early in December 1901 and on the 12th of that month the signals transmitted from England were clearly and distinctly received at the temporary station at St. John’s in Newfoundland …

These results, although achieved with imperfect apparatus, were sufficient to convince me and my co-workers that by means of permanent stations and the employment of sufficient power it would be possible to transmit messages across the Atlantic Ocean in the same way as they were sent over much shorter distances.

The tests could not be continued in Newfoundland owing to the hostility of a cable company, which claimed all rights for telegraphy, whether wireless or otherwise, in that colony.
— Marchese Guglielmo Marconi (1874 – 1937), Nobel lecture.

Here we have, in theory, a portable radio receiving apparatus that a man might carry in his trousers pocket or a woman in her handbag, that would enable the possessor to pick up messages from the air at all times and under divers conditions — while sitting in one’s home or office, walking along the street … and that which is possible today may be depended upon to become an actuality tomorrow.

— Henry Smith Williams, Practical Radio, Funk and Wagnalls, 1924, 380.

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