Samuel F.B. Morse's invention of the telegraph marked a new era in communication. For the first time, people were able to communicate quickly from great distances. The genesis of Morse's invention is covered in detail, starting in 1832, along with the establishment of the first transcontinental telegraph line in the United States and the dramatic effect the device had on the Civil War. The Morse telegraph that served the world for over 100 years is explained in clear terms. Also examined are recent advances in telegraph technology and its continued impact on communication.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

A challenge to the long-held notion of close ties between the railroad and telegraph industries of the nineteenth century. To many people in the nineteenth century, the railroad and the telegraph were powerful, transformative forces, ones that seemed to work closely together to shape the economy, society, and politics of the United States. However, the perception—both popular and scholarly—of the intrinsic connections between these two institutions has largely obscured a far more complex and contested relationship, one that created profound divisions between entrepreneurial telegraph promoters and warier railroad managers. In The Train and the Telegraph, Benjamin Sidney Michael Schwantes argues that uncertainty, mutual suspicion, and cautious experimentation more aptly describe how railroad officials and telegraph entrepreneurs hesitantly established a business and technical relationship. The two industries, Schwantes reveals, were drawn together gradually through external factors such as war, state and federal safety regulations, and financial necessity, rather than because of any perception that the two industries were naturally related or beneficial to each other. Complicating the existing scholarship by demonstrating that the railroad and telegraph in the United States were uneasy partners at best—and more often outright antagonists—throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, The Train and the Telegraph will appeal to scholars of communication, transportation, and American business history and political economy, as well as to enthusiasts of the nineteenth-century American railroad industry.

As the Civil War raged, President Abraham Lincoln spent many hours in the War Department's telegraph office, where he received all his telegrams. Morning, noon, and night Lincoln would visit the small office to receive the latest news from the armies at the front. The place was a refuge for the president, who waited for incoming dispatches and talked while they were being deciphered. David Homer Bates, one of the first military telegraphers, recollects those presidential visits during times of crisis. Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, originally published in 1907, shows history in the making and personalities at their most unguarded: Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Andrew Carnegie, General George McClellan, and many others. The reader is with Lincoln at the scene of dramatic tidings: of the Northern disasters at Bull Run, of Meade's victory at Gettysburg, of Grant's capture of Richmond. Lincoln wrote the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation at the telegraph office, and from there the news of his assassination was relayed. Wartime human-interest anecdotes, the wonder of the new technology, the unraveling of ciphers and codes, conspiracies and rumors, a heightened sense of onrushing events, the tragedy of Good Friday 1865-all are conveyed in this classic of Lincolniana. Introducing Lincoln in the Telegraph Office is James A. Rawley, Carl Adolph Happold Professor Emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His works include Turning Points of the Civil War, also available as a Bison Book.

The compiler of this little compendium of Telegraph History places it in the hands of the public in the hope that it may be received with favor. The historical data is taken from leading standard authorities. The biographical sketches of eminent scientists and inventors will enable the reader to form his own conclusions as to the merits of each. The sketches of prominent pioneer telegraph men in Canada should be especially interesting to Canadians. Many names worthy of mention have been reluctantly omitted, as it was thought desirable to confine this initial work into as narrow a compass as possible. A more extended edition may be forthcoming later should this venture prove successful. The few reminiscent incidents in the Canadian section will lend a spice of variety to the narrative.