About 62 people had claimed invention of the first electric telegraph by 1837, when Britain started the first operating telegraph using five needles to point to alphabet letters. New York professor ...

IT may be safely said that no one of the wonder-working agencies of the nineteenth century, of an importance in any degree equal to that of the Electric Telegraph, is so little understood in its ...

On Oct. 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph system was completed by Western Union, making it possible to transmit messages rapidly (by mid-19th century standards) from coast to coast. This ...

Click to open image viewer. Pocket telegraph instrument used on the train during Abraham Lincoln’s trip from Springfield, Illinois to Washington to his first Inauguration March 4, 1861. Seen with ...

The nation is divided by war yet linked at last from coast to coast by a transcontinental telegraph this week in 1861. For some time, the telegraph's eastern terminus only extended from the Atlantic ...

Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery ...