Before email, before the fax, but after the telegram, there was the Telex. As early as the 1800s, people were trying to figure out how to communicate without sending letters. It took a long time to send a letter and receive a response, and the urgency for faster communication developed faster than the postal system or the phone company. Telegraphs were the fastest, most efficient way to get information from Point A to Point B, but they weren’t automated.

The first telegraphs were rudimentary. People used smoke signals, light, and fire to communicate messages to each other. In Napoleon’s time an optical telegraphy method called a semaphore network was used – it used flags and shuttered towers to get the message across. That, obviously, is not private, and it isn’t practical for people who need to communicate over larger distances. Someone in France, for example, can’t see a flag signal in England or Switzerland. So, in 1809, a German inventor named Samuel Thomas von Sommering came up with something called an electrochemical telegraph that used electrical current and tubes of acid to send messages. Sounds confusing and it was confusing. The acid in the tube would bubble according to the character sent over the wire. Someone would have to “transcribe” the bubbles to decode the message.

Baron Schilling thought that magnets might be more helpful than tubes of acid, so he developed the first electromagnetic telegraph in 1832. It used electric current in varying degrees to transmit data to a receiving station that “translated” the amount of electrical current into the character it represented. Just one year later in 1833, Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber used Schilling’s design and made it over a wider area of about 1 kilometer. They simplified the transmission code to binary, and connected the receiver and transmitter via a coil that utilized electromagnetic current. This paved the way for a commercial electrical telegraph.

The commercial electrical telegraph was first patented in 1837, and was put to use on the first leg of Britain’s Great Western Railway. Around that same time, Samuel Morse was hard at work in New Jersey, signaling the alphabet with his assistant Alfred. This type of electrical telegraph employed Morse code – a system of dots and dashes that represent numbers and letters. In addition to the more precise and universal method of communication, Morse was able to get his messages to transmit over longer distances. Morse’s invention caught on and pretty soon the Pony Express was out of business for good.

Telegraphy technology continued to develop rapidly, and it wasn’t very long before Nikola Tesla spearheaded wireless telegraphy. Many of the great minds of the time worked diligently to utilize radio waves, electric current, and existing telegraphic inventions to improve the functionality of remote messaging. In the 1930’s machines called “Telex” machines were developed. They implemented telephone technology and opened up a whole new era of telegraphic communication. The United States was a little slower to implement the new technology, but Western Union led the charge in 1958 and developed a satellite exchange that started in New York. By 1962, many major cities had Telex exchanges, and the technology was used for many, many years to come.

Author Bio: Lawrence Reaves believes that IT outsourcing should be easy. That’s why he trusts PLANIT Technology Group with his data center and networking security needs. PLANIT Technology Group has offices in Gaithersburg, MD, Virginia Beach, VA, and Richmond, VA.

Category: Computers and Technology
Keywords: IT outsourcing, telegraphy