A language of short and long
The electric telegraph carried one kind of signal: current on, or current off. To send words over such a line, someone had to decide how to represent letters as patterns of on and off. The answer used by most of the world became Morse code, a system of short signals (dots) and long signals (dashes) assigned to letters, numbers and punctuation.
Where the code came from
Samuel Morse and his assistant Alfred Vail developed the original code in the late 1830s. Vail is often credited with working out much of the letter assignments, and a commonly told story says he assigned shorter codes to more frequent letters. In English, the letter E is a single dot and T a single dash. Common letters have short codes, and rarer ones long ones, which saves time on average.
The original American code differed in details from the version used in Europe. In 1851, a conference of German and Austrian telegraph administrations adopted a modified code that avoided some of the spaces within letters used in the American version, and this form spread across Europe. Later it was standardized internationally and is now called International Morse code. American Morse remained in use in North America for railroad and landline telegraphy for many years.
The instruments
Early Morse receivers wrote the code on a moving paper strip with a stylus driven by an electromagnet. An operator then read the marks. Within a few years, operators found they could understand the code by listening to the clicking of the receiving magnet. Companies then replaced the paper register in many offices with a sounder, a device that made a sharp click when the circuit closed and a different click when it opened. The operator listened to the rhythm and wrote down the words.
The sending key was a simple lever. Pressing it closed the circuit, and a skilled operator controlled the length of each press with great precision. Each operator had an individual style, so people on a line could often recognize each other by the sending rhythm, sometimes called a “fist.”
Becoming an operator
Learning telegraphy took months. Trainees learned the code, practiced sending and receiving, and gradually increased their speed. Skilled operators could handle many words per minute, and the best were admired. Operators on railroads and in city offices also had to be accurate, because errors in a telegram could change its meaning and cause financial loss.
The occupation attracted many young people, and both men and women worked as operators, though employers sometimes paid women less. Operators developed their own culture, with abbreviations, nicknames and friendships formed over the wire between people who had never met. Many used shorthand codes for common phrases, and some of these abbreviations passed into other uses.
From counter to door
A telegram typically began with a customer writing a message on a form at a telegraph office and paying by the word. A clerk sent it as Morse code to a distant office, where a receiving operator wrote it down. A messenger, often a boy on foot or a bicycle, delivered the paper to the recipient. In busy networks a message might be relayed through several offices on the way, and each relay added time and a chance of errors.
Telegrams were paid for by the word, and sometimes by distance. Senders learned to be brief. They cut articles and polite phrases, and the expression “telegraphic style” came to mean writing that was clipped and compressed. Businesses used commercial codes in which a single word stood for a long phrase, which saved money and helped confidentiality.
Effects on news and business
The telegraph changed newspapers by making distant news instant. Editors began to receive short dispatches from correspondents and agencies. News agencies expanded because they could sell telegraphed reports to many newspapers at once. The common structure of a news article, with the most important facts first, is often said to have been encouraged by the habit of sending the main points before the line could fail or the cost rose.
Businesses used the telegraph to place orders, confirm shipments, quote prices and arrange credit. Merchants in different cities could compare prices quickly. Banks used it to transfer funds. Those with early access sometimes made profits from information, a dynamic that anticipates later debates about fast communication in financial markets.
Personal use grew too, though more slowly. Because telegrams were expensive, people used them for urgent news, including births, deaths and emergencies. A telegram delivered by a messenger often carried bad news, and the arrival of one could be a source of dread.
Improvements in the system
Inventors worked to increase the capacity and ease of use of telegraph lines. Duplex and multiplex systems allowed several messages to travel on a wire at once. Printing telegraphs, which typed messages at the other end without a Morse operator, appeared from the mid-nineteenth century. Stock tickers used the same principle to print prices. Over time, teleprinters with keyboards and automatic equipment replaced hand-keyed Morse on busy routes, although Morse continued in radio and for special uses.
The legacy of the code
Morse code outlasted the wire telegraph, and teleprinters with typewriter keyboards took over much of the work on busy lines. Morse was carried onward by wireless telegraphy. It was adopted for ship and aircraft radio and by amateur radio operators, and it still has a niche today. The idea of a simple code carried by an on-off signal also prefigured digital communication, in which everything in electronic computers is reduced to two states.