Before the telegraph was invented, messages could travel as fast as the fastest mode of transport available. Today, however, advanced communication technologies have changed the scenario to a great extent. Messages now travel at the speed of light through cables and optical fibers, and are delivered in the least time possible. Mobile phones have made communication an on-the-go process. Messages, emails, news, videos, status updates, tweets are all just a click away.
For quite a few days now I have been wondering how different life would have been before the invention of the mobile phone, the Internet, the telephone, or even further back in time – before the telegraph.
Many inventors and scientists have worked tirelessly for years to develop systems that would make long-distance communications easier and quicker. We all have, in some time or the other in our lives, heard or read stories of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and many more. The study of the history of telecommunications is, however, incomplete without due consideration to the perspectives of people other than those working in those fields.
Soon after its invention, the electric telegraph had become a subject of awe, since the public had never seen or heard of a faster way to send messages from one city to another. In 1846, the fact that a message could be sent from Buffalo to Baltimore and replied to Buffalo within two hours was a matter worth being published in science magazines.
Page 18 of the October 10, 1846 edition of the Scientific American, published in New York, carried a news snippet titled ‘Quick Work’.
The Baltimore Sun says – ‘A communication was made from Buffalo to Baltimore last week, and an answer was received at the telegraph office in the former city in about two hours!’
Another article, titled ‘News by Telegraph’, in the same edition of the Scientific American praises the fact that a piece of news by the ‘Great Western’ on a certain day was published within four hours in several other American cities.
The news by the Great Western which arrived on Wednesday week, was published within four hours in Boston, New Haven, Springfield, Albany, Utica, Rochester,Buffalo, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
The following beautiful extract we find in a recent number of the New York Sun. It is from the pen of Mr. C. D. Stuart, the able correspondent of that paper, now in London.[1]
Another issue with new technologies is that they, mainly, take some time getting used to and being widely accepted and understood by the general public. The electric telegraph was no different. In 1870, a Prussian woman went to a telegraph office with a dish of sour cabbage (a kind of pickle) to have it telegraphed to her son who was a soldier fighting for Prussia against France. The operator tried his best to convince her that the telegraph could not send objects. The woman was, however, adamant, insisting that if soldiers could be called to war in France by telegraph, her dish could be sent too.[2]
The field of telecommunications has seen the most drastic development within the last hundred years. The telegraph has faded into oblivion, only to be superseded by mobile phones and computer networks. We now live in what we call the information age, but stories of human curiosity and amazement during the heydays of the electric telegraph are mere examples of the nineteenth century age of information.
This may be difficult for some of the readers to believe, but I have first hand knowledge of part of that different life.
I distinctly remember the summer when the Rural Electrification Agency brought power to farm. I remember so well because I collected hundreds of meters of 'dynamite' wire. What I don't remember is whether the year was 1955 or 1956.
In any case, Grandpa, and family, had no electricity. They also were without running water. I would spend my summer vacations on the farm, enjoying the freedom from excess clothing, shoes, school, and other uneeded things.
News for Grandpa came from neighbors, from letters, and the infrequent trip to the nearest town. There was a very old crystal radio, but it was rarely heard. There was an old automotive battery that was used to collect the meager current provided by a windmill generator. The battery was old, the windmill was not reliable. Most of the transmissions received came well after the sun went down and required that you sit very close to the speaker. If you were skillful at filtering the static, you might just be able to hear a broadcast from The Grand Ole Opry.
Life was hard, but simple. Laughter and tears came just as easily to us as to our friends confined to the city. We played our games without a keyboard or being wired with anything besides the baling sort, Except that one year when I had as much of that wonderful wire as I could have hoped for.
I can't say that not having any of the 'modern' things made for a more peaceful life. I am certain that there was far less anxiety and turmoil in life down on that dusty farm. I'm equally certain that the neighbors and townspeople that I met were equally free from the daily stresses that we seem to have heaped upon our heads.
I was always sad when the end of summer came around. I knew that soon I would be back in the hustle and bustle of the big city. Thoughts of automobiles, trucks, telephones, television, tight shoes, and school should not be allowed to sneak up on the summer fun. But those things always did.
Simpler lives in simpler times. Would I like to live that way now? Not on your life.