Monday of this week was the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental telegraph. It is hard now to understand how significant this event was. Until the telegraph came in to being, it was impossible for messages to be relayed to people who were long distances apart any faster than the speed of a horse. Yes, there were earlier devices to transmit communications over long distances that allowed messages to be sent through the air via visible signs such as flags, fire pots or smoke signals. But these were unreliable due to weather and required the posting of people all along the path of the signaling system.
To go from sending messages via horses (remember the transcontinental railroad was not to be finished until well after the Civil War) which could take days to deliver mail to almost instantly sending messages across telegraph wires from one coast line to the other at the speed of light was an amazing feat. In fact, some see the construction of the telegraph system as being more significant in its impact than the Internet which the telegraph has been compared to in the excellent book “The Victorian Internet”.
On one level, that is true. To go from the speed of a horse to the speed of light in communicating information was a transformation the likes of which had never been seen in human history. After all, it could take weeks for news to travel from one end of the country to another. This happened even after Lincoln’s death in areas of the country that did not yet have a telegraph connection.
Interestingly too, in reading “The Victorian Internet”, one finds that many of the things we have seen in the Internet’s evolution – online banking (via the transmission of codes in made up words that could include dozens of letters), news reporting, and yes online pornography – were a part of the telegraph’s history as well. Lincoln even used the telegraph to get real time reports from generals outside the chain of command whom he trusted more than General McClellan.
And while we may be proud and even awed by the advanced Internet services we have today, our fancy services aren’t always better than older technology. This video clip of the Tonight Show records a contest between two youths texting a message from one to the other and two telegraphy hobbyists sending the same message. Perhaps surprisingly, the telegraphers won!
In the end though, as important as the telegraph was, I don’t believe it has been as transformative as the Internet. Why? Because the telegraph did not enable personal communications from one to one or one to many. It was operated by professionals who learned to send telegraph messages and were paid to do so. At one time, there were over 10,000 telegraphers but none of them had a telegraph at home. No one could wake up and send a message from their home whenever they wanted. In fact, in order to send a message, one had to walk or ride to the telegraph office, often quite a distance away, in order to contact someone else. The telegraph enhanced life by helping make the news more widely available more quickly. It improved commerce by connecting businesses to each other and to customers. And it made it possible for government to function more effectively.
But the telegraph never became a network linking people. It linked institutions, towns, and offices but not average citizens. In fact, when the telephone emerged – the next great advanced communications technology – Western Union, the telegraph company, thought its main use would be largely to connect people to their telegraph office so they could send messages. No one could conceive of a real time, electronic network connecting people whenever, and wherever they are.
Clearly the technologies of the Internet have made this possible. But it is the broadband networks that link over 90 percent of all homes and are now available via mobile networks to much of the country that have brought personal communications of all kinds – from sending pictures to writing emails – to the levels we see today. While linking the coasts and many towns and cities in America at light speed for the first time in history was an historic achievement of immense proportions, I don’t believe it rivals the fact that billions today can connect to each other and the world via voice, text and data, whenever they want.
And while linking institutions and businesses was vital, the reality is that the telegraph system really did not create the highly innovative, creative and dynamic environment we have in today’s Internet ecosystem as described quite well in these two papers I referenced before by Jeff Eisenach and Jonathan Sallet.
It is an environment – unlike the case of the telegraph that was owned and managed largely by one company and operated by professionals hired to run the system – in which innovation can thrive. And this has transformed communications in so many ways that is deeper and connects more effectively to more people than was ever possible with the telegraph. This personal level of connectivity has made the Internet even more transformative in the daily lives of billions of humans than the telegraph could ever hope to be.