The telegraph represented a disruptive innovation in the history of the United States from its invention in the 1830s onward by quickly becoming a vital part of the nation's communication infrastructure. Its relative importance declined with the spread of telephones in the 20th century. Telegraph service permitted short texts to be sent cheaply and arrive in a matter of minutes to hours, instead of days or weeks. Telegraphy facilitated faster and more profitable freight and passenger railway traffic, consolidated financial and commodity markets, sped political news and commentary, and lowered information costs for companies.[1]
Progress in electric devices in Europe lead inventors to create electrical telegraph systems, such as the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph in England. They invented complex systems with a separate key for each letter of the alphabet. In 1832, Samuel Morse, an American artist, with help from scientist Leonard Gale, searched for a simpler idea for an electromagnetic recording system. Telegraphers tap their fingers on a knob and the system imprints dots and dashes onto a moving strip of paper on a distant receiver. Furthermore, he creates the American Morse code in the 1840s, allowing telegraphers to rapidly send and receive messages. With experience they can listen to the clicks and "hear" words without looking at the paper record.[2] Morse patented the system and tried to persuade Congress to adopt it as a government-owned and operated system like the post office. However the Democrats in power are hostile to federal spending. In 1837 Morse obtained funding from Congress to build a telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore, a distance of about forty miles. He spends seven years perfecting the system. Finally on May 24, 1844 he sends the first message, "What hath God wrought." Politicians in Washington were paying close attention to the national presidential nominating conventions underway in Baltimore and immediately recognized the advantages of near-instantaneous news reports.[3] By 1851 the Bureau of the Census reported 75 companies with 21,000 miles of wire, mostly operating inside cities.
By 1856, long-distance lines from The Magnetic Telegraph Company linked New York City to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, along with points in between. Soon there was a link from Washington across the South to New Orleans.[4]
In 1851, Hiram Sibley formed the Western Union Telegraph Company. It acquired local and regional telegraph companies, and soon became the largest in the United States, headed toward a near monopoly in 1866.[5] Meanwhile, the British replaced their own slow system with the faster Morse system.[6]
Newspaper users
The introduction of telegraphy had a dramatic impact on the newspaper industry.[7] A group of New York newspapers formed the New York Associated Press (NYAP) in 1846 to regularize news transmission. According to Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb, after a rocky start, NYAP's relationship with telegraph companies improved significantly once Western Union became the dominant player in 1866. The two companies joined forces to create a formidable monopoly, with Western Union providing NYAP with preferential rates on the condition that they solely use their services and not those of their rivals. This mutually beneficial arrangement was decisive in building both companies. Meanwhile, regional press associations outside of New York City sprouted up among newspapers and aligned themselves with NYAP, with the Western Associated Press being one of the most important. Over time, the Western Associated Press surpassed NYAP in significance and was eventually renamed the Associated Press (AP) in the 1890s.[8][9]
According to Richard R. John, the AP transformed into a news broker where information was a tradable commodity. News brokers were granted privileges like special rates and, crucially, priority access to the telegraph wires by telegraph officials. Now every newspaper has access to major news stories hours after they were first reported, as well as texts of influential editorials and speeches. Clippings from the New-York Tribune edited by Horace Greeley became especially influential for the Whig Party newspapers, and after 1854 for the press of the new Republican Party. The coordination of the distribution of time-sensitive information by newsbrokers, such as the AP, gave them substantial influence that many deemed politically hazardous, resulting in various public controversies during the Gilded Age.[10][11]
1861–1900
In 1861-1865 the telegraph played a crucial role in the American Civil War, allowing for rapid communication inside marching armies, and between the national capitals and field armies, which was facilitated by the operation of the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps. The Confederacy had a much weaker system than the Union, and Union forces systematically listened in, or destroyed its lines.[12]
In 1866 the first transatlantic telegraph cable was completed, connecting America and Europe.[13]
The completion of the First transcontinental telegraph in 1861 allowed messages to be sent from coast to coast in a matter of hours rather than weeks. In the late 1860s and 1870s, the telegraph expanded rapidly westward, connecting cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, and San Francisco. By the 1880s, telegraph lines crisscrossed the country, connecting practically all towns and cities of all sizes. The telegraph was used for everything from sending personal messages to conducting business deals and transmitting news stories.[14]
According to business historian H. W. Brands, the telegraph separated communication from transportation. This caused American financial markets based in New York to become even more consolidated as they dominated the nation's economy. Prompt news of price changes is most valuable commodity traded in financial markets. With the telegraph replacing communication via steam boat and railroad train, high priority data now move across the states at low cost. Speculators based in New York had an advantage, and other cities could not compete. The Atlantic cable further expanded the geography of speedy information, allowing European investors to operate in the American market almost as efficiently as those with offices in the states, as the message time between London and New York plunged from several weeks to just several minutes.[15]
By 1900, the telegraph had become an integral part of American life, linking people and businesses across the country and around the world. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. After 1920 it replaced the telegraph as the primary means of communication between cities. As the telegraph was eventually supplanted, it paved the way for the development of modern communication systems and revolutionized the way people communicate over long distances.[16] Willey and Rice (1933) state: "Between 1902 and 1927 the per capita use of the telegraph increased by only 60 percent, which appears to be a relatively small growth for so dynamic a period until it is remembered that the telephone had its development during these same years."[17][18]
Importance of speed
Telegrams were fast, and the historian examines what circumstances made the speed of major importance. The telegraph arrived when the United States already had a full-scale postal system.[19] It delivered local mail quickly, with several deliveries a day.[20] For intercity mail it depended on available transportation, and tried to be faster than private messengers.[21] Much faster mail delivery came with the railroad, so the improvement in train speed had great impact. Telegrams were much faster, but for long distances the message had to be rekeyed along the way by relay operators so there was a delay. Speed made a great difference in military decision-making during the Civil War, when a one hour delay could affect the outcome of a battle. The convoluted command structure, however, meant that critical information was often not sent to the field commander who needed its.[22] In normal times a large fraction of the telegraph traffic was devoted to speculation on the cost of various commodities. Buyers searched for the lowest price and producers looked for the highest price. Increasingly most of the telegrams dealt with speculation in future prices. A speculator would sell a promise regarding product X for delivery on day Y at price Z. But the speculator never actually possesses any Y. Every so often conditions change that will affect the price. The first speculator to learn about the change and act will make a profit--laggards will lose money because speed is of the essence. In speculation, telegrams become a decisive advantage over the mail or private messengers.[23] Railroads depended on the telegraph to coordinate the routing of trains in opposite directions over a single-track system with sidings, thus saving time for both trains.[24] Big city newspapers competed for street sales and when one had a scoop it sold papers faster than its rivals.[25] In dealing with a local emergency such as medical conditions, accidents, or fires, sending a telegram rarely was called for. Telegrams were essential to warn towns downstream that a flash flood was coming.[26]
The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded in Rochester, New York in 1851. In 1856 it merged with its competitor the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, and changed its name to Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1857, Western Union participated in the 'Treaty of Six Nations', an attempt by six of the largest telegraph firms to create a system of regional telegraphy monopolies with a shared network of main lines. After the creation of the 'Six Nations' system, Western Union continued to acquire hundreds of local and regional telegraph companies and by 1864 had transformed from a regional monopoly into a national oligopolist with its only serious competitors being the American Telegraph Company and the United States Telegraph Company.[27]
Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph in 1861. In 1866, Western Union acquired the American Telegraph Company & the United States Telegraph Company, its two main competitors, gaining a virtual monopoly over the American telegraphy industry. The company also began to develop new telegraphy-related services beyond the transmission and delivery of telegrams, launching the first stock ticker in 1866, a standardized time service in 1870 and wire money transfer in 1871.[28]
In the 1870s, the company faced increased competition from newly formed rival telegraphy conglomerate Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company and from the nascent telephony industry led by the Bell Telephone Company. Western Union instead attempted to launch a rival telephony system before settling a patent lawsuit with Bell and leaving the telephone business completely in 1879. Financier Jay Gould orchestrated a merger of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company with Western Union in 1881, giving him a controlling share of the merged company.[29]
In 1867 Western Union had 2,600 offices connected by 85,000 miles of wire. That year it handled 5.9 million messages with revenue of $6.0 million. By 1890 it had 19,400 offices linked by 679,000 miles of wire. It handled 56 million messages with a revenue of $29.1 million.[30]
By 1900, Western Union operated a million miles of telegraph lines and two international undersea cables. AT&T gained control of Western Union in 1909. However, in 1913 AT&T, under federal indictment for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, was forced to sell its shares in the company which once again became independent.[31]
Western Union acquired its only major competitor in the American telegraphy sector Postal Telegraph, Inc. in 1945, effectively giving the company monopoly power over the telegram industry. After 1945 the telegraphy industry began to experience a decline, with total telegraph messages almost halving from 1945 to 1960.
In 1931, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) introduced the Teletypewriter Exchange Service (TWX) which operated over telephone circuits between devices located directly in private businesses. This enabled a secretary to type and send a written message to another TWX machine elsewhere, without using Western Union services, or going to a telegraph office. TWX was replaced by fax machines in the 1960s and by the Internet starting in the 1990s.[32][33]
Present-day telecommunications in Canada include telephone, radio, television, and internet usage. In the past, telecommunications included telegraphy available through Canadian Pacific and Canadian National.
Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems called telegraphs, that were devised to communicate text messages more quickly than physical transportation. Electrical telegraphy can be considered to be the first example of electrical engineering.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of Morse code in 1837 and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined, so such systems are thus not true telegraphs.
A teleprinter is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations.
Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term wireless telegraphy was also used for other experimental technologies for transmitting telegraph signals without wires. In radiotelegraphy, information is transmitted by pulses of radio waves of two different lengths called "dots" and "dashes", which spell out text messages, usually in Morse code. In a manual system, the sending operator taps on a switch called a telegraph key which turns the transmitter on and off, producing the pulses of radio waves. At the receiver the pulses are audible in the receiver's speaker as beeps, which are translated back to text by an operator who knows Morse code.
The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is an obsolete form of communication, and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data are still carried on other transatlantic telecommunications cables.
The Pacific Telegraph Company was one of the organizations responsible for constructing the telegraph line which resulted in the first transcontinental telegraph network in the United States. The company built the section of line between Julesburg, Colorado Territory and Salt Lake City, Utah Territory.
The history of telecommunication began with the use of smoke signals and drums in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In the 1790s, the first fixed semaphore systems emerged in Europe. However, it was not until the 1830s that electrical telecommunication systems started to appear. This article details the history of telecommunication and the individuals who helped make telecommunication systems what they are today. The history of telecommunication is an important part of the larger history of communication.
The Signal Corps in the American Civil War comprised two organizations: the U.S. Army Signal Corps, which began with the appointment of Major Albert J. Myer as its first signal officer just before the war and remains an entity to this day, and the Confederate States Army Signal Corps, a much smaller group of officers and men, using similar organizations and techniques as their Union opponents. Both accomplished tactical and strategic communications for the warring armies, including electromagnetic telegraphy and aerial telegraphy. Although both services had an implicit mission of battlefield observation, intelligence gathering, and artillery fire direction from their elevated signal stations, the Confederate Signal Corps also included an explicit espionage function.
Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith was a U.S. lawyer, legislator, and telegraph pioneer and financier.
George May Phelps was a 19th-century American inventor of automated telegraphy equipment. He is credited with synthesizing the designs of several existing printers into his line of devices which became the dominant apparatus for automated reception and transmission of telegraph messages.
Telex is a telecommunication service that provides text-based message exchange over the circuits of the public switched telephone network or by private lines. The technology operates on switched station-to-station basis with teleprinter devices at the receiving and sending locations. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electronically between businesses in the post–World War II period. Its usage went into decline as the fax machine grew in popularity in the 1980s.
The Commercial Telegraphers Union of America (CTUA) was a United States labor union formed to promote the interests of commercial telegraph operators.
Women in telegraphy have been evident since the 1840s. The introduction of practical systems of telegraphy in the 1840s led to the creation of a new occupational category, the telegrapher, telegraphist or telegraph operator. Duties of the telegrapher included sending and receiving telegraphic messages, known as telegrams, using a variety of signaling systems, and routing of trains for the railroads. While telegraphy is often viewed as a males-only occupation, women were also employed as telegraph operators from its earliest days. Telegraphy was one of the first communications technology occupations open to women.
Semaphore is the use of an apparatus to create a visual signal transmitted over distance. A semaphore can be performed with devices including: fire, lights, flags, sunlight, and moving arms. Semaphores can be used for telegraphy when arranged in visually connected networks, or for traffic signalling such as in railway systems, or traffic lights in cities.
The timeline of North American telegraphy is a chronology of notable events in the history of the electric telegraphy in the United States and Canada, including the rapid spread of telegraphic communications starting from 1844 and completion of the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861.
In the nineteenth century, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had the world's first commercial telegraph company. British telegraphy dominated international telecommunications well into the twentieth. Telegraphy is the sending of textual messages by human operators using symbolic codes. Electrical telegraphy used conducting wires to send messages, often incorporating a telegram service to deliver the telegraphed communication from the telegraph office. This is distinct from optical telegraphy that preceded it and the radiotelegraphy that followed. Though Francis Ronalds first demonstrated a working telegraph over a substantial distance in 1816, he was unable to put it into practical use. Starting in 1836, William Fothergill Cooke, with the scientific assistance of Charles Wheatstone, developed the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph. The needle telegraph instrument suggested by Wheatstone, the battery invented by John Frederic Daniell, and the relay invented by Edward Davy were important components of this system.
The telephone played a major communications role in American history from the 1876 publication of its first patent by Alexander Graham Bell onward. In the 20th century, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) dominated the telecommunication market as the at times largest company in the world, until it was broken up and replaced by a system of competitors. Originally targeted at business users and upscale families, by the 1920s the "phone" became widely popular in the general population. Ordinary people either subscribed to telephone service themselves, or used a telephone in the neighborhood, including public pay telephones. Long-distance service was metered and much more expensive than local, flat-rate calling. Ordinary Americans contacted businesses, friends, and relatives. Business-to-business communication was important, and increasingly displaced telegrams.
References
↑ Tomas Nonnenmacher, "History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry" in EH.Net Encyclopedia (2001).
↑ Lewis Coe, The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and Its Predecessors in the United States (McFarland, 2003). ISBN 0-7864-1808-7.
↑ Richard R. John, Network Nation (2010) pp. 34–51.
↑ Jeffrey L. Kieve, The Electric Telegraph: A Social and Economic History (David and Charles, 1973) p. 176.
↑ Menahem Blondheim, "The click: Telegraphic technology, journalism, and the transformations of the New York Associated Press." American Journalism 17.4 (2000): 27-52.
↑ Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb, The International Distribution of News: The Associated Press, Press Association, and Reuters, 1848–1947 (Cambridge UP, 2014), pp. 17–24, 46–51.
↑ David Hochfelder, "Constructing an Industrial Divide: Western Union, AT&T, and the Federal Government, 1876-1971" Business History Review 76 (Winter 2002): 705-732.
↑ Richard R. John, "Recasting the Information Infrastructure for the Industrial Age", in Alfred D. Chandler Jr, and James W. Cortada, eds. A nation transformed by information: How information has shaped the United States from colonial times to the present (Oxford UP, 2000). pp 55-106 at p 83.
↑ Richard Allen Schwarzlose, The Nation's Newsbrokers: The formative years, from pretelegraph to 1865 (Northwestern University Press, 1989).
↑ Paul J. Scheips, "Union signal communications: innovation and conflict." Civil war history 9.4 (1963): 399-421.
↑ Simone M. Mueller, "From cabling the Atlantic to wiring the world: A review essay on the 150th anniversary of the Atlantic telegraph cable of 1866." Technology and Culture (2016): 507-526 online.
↑ David Hochfelder, The telegraph in America, 1832–1920 (2012) pp, 37–38.
↑ Hochfelder, The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920, pp. 138–142.
↑ Malcolm M. Willey, and Stuart A. Rice, "The agencies of communication." in Recent Social Trends in the United States: Report of the President's Research Committee on Social Trends (1933): pp 197-198.
↑ Segal says after 1920 the importance of the telegraph "steadily diminished." Howard P. Segal "Rewiring the History of the Telegraph and the Telephone." (2014) p 457.
↑ Richard R. John, Spreading the news: The American postal system from Franklin to Morse (Harvard UP, 1995) pp. 10–12, 17–18.
↑ Joel A. Tarr, Thomas Finholt, and David Goodman, "The city and the telegraph: urban telecommunications in the pre-telephone era." Journal of Urban History 14.1 (1987): 38-80.
↑ Wayne E. Fuller, The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Man(U of Chicago Press, 1972) p. 173–175.
↑ Roscoe Pound, “The Military Telegraph in the Civil War.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 66, (1936), pp. 185–203. online
↑ Alexander Engel, "Buying time: futures trading and telegraphy in nineteenth-century global commodity markets." Journal of Global History 10.2 (2015): 284-306.
↑ Stephen Salsbury, "The emergence of an early large-scale technical system: The American railroad network." in The development of large technical systems (Routledge, 2019) pp. 37-68.
↑ Susan R. Brooker-Gross, "Timeliness: interpretations from a sample of 19th century newspapers." Journalism Quarterly 58.4 (1981): 594-598.
↑ For a dramatic episode see Joann Green Byrd, Calamity: the Heppner flood of 1903 (University of Washington Press, 2014) p. 50 online.
↑ Simon Slayford, "Differences Between Telex & Telegrams" Bizfluent (26 Sep 2017) online
↑ Jonathan Coopersmith, Faxed: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).
Further reading
Blondheim, Menahem. News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844–1897 (Harvard UP. 1994).
Blondheim, Menahem. "The click: Telegraphic technology, journalism, and the transformations of the New York Associated Press." American Journalism 17.4 (2000): 27-52.
Carey, James W. "Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph" Prospects (1983) vol. 8, pp 303–325; doi:10.1017/S0361233300003793
Chandler, Alfred D., and James W. Cortada, eds. A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford UP, 2000) online
Coe, Lewis. The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and Its Predecessors in the United States (McFarland, 2003). online
Downey, Greg. "Telegraph messenger boys: crossing the borders between history of technology and human geography." Professional Geographer 55.2 (2003): 134-145. online
Du Boff, Richard B. "Business Demand and the Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844-1860" Business History Review, 54#4 (1980); pp.459–479 online;
Du Boff, Richard B. "The Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century America: Technology and Monopoly" Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26#4 (1984), pp.571–586.
Gabler, Edwin. The American Telegrapher: A Social History, 1860-1900 (1988)
Gallagher, Edward A. Getting the message across: the story of Western Union ((Newcomen Society, 1971)
Hindle, Brooke. Emulation and Invention (1981), compares telegraph and steamboat.
Hochfelder, David. The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) excerpt;
Hochfelder, David Paul. "Taming the lightning: American telegraphy as a revolutionary technology, 1832-1860" (PhD dissertation, Case Western Reserve University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1999. 9922500).
Hochfelder, David. "A comparison of the postal telegraph movement in Great Britain and the United States, 1866–1900." Enterprise & Society 1.4 (2000): 739–761.
Hochfelder, David. "Constructing an Industrial Divide: Western Union, AT&T, and the Federal Government, 1876-1971" Business History Review 76 (Winter 2002) pp: 705-732.
Honsowetz, Aaron Michael. "1866 Post Roads Act: Federal Preemption and Deregulation of the United States Telegraph Industry" (PhD dissertation, George Mason University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2015. 3720567).
Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2009) pp 690–698.
Israel, Paul. From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and the Changing Context of American Invention, 1830–1920 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1992).
Jepsen, Thomas C. My Sisters Telegraphic: Women in the Telegraph Office, 1846–1950 (Ohio UP, 2000).
John, Richard R. Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications (Harvard UP, 2010) excerpt
Kern, Stephen. The culture of time and space, 1880–1918 (2nd ed. Harvard University Press, 2003).
Leonard, Thomas C. "The Conquest of Time, Space, and Political Opponents." Reviews in American History 23#3 (1995), pp. 478–81. online
Müller, Simone M. Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks (Columbia University Press, 2016). excerpt
Nonnenmacher, Tomas. "History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry" EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. (2001) online
Nonnenmacher, Tomas. "State Promotion and Regulation of the Telegraph Industry, 1845-1860" Journal of Economic History 61#1 (2001), pp.19–36
Schwantes, Benjamin Michael. The Train And The Telegraph: A Revisionist History (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019)
Schwantes, Benjamin Sidney Michael. "Fallible guardian: The social construction of railroad telegraphy in 19th-century America" (PhD dissertation, University of Delaware; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2008. 3337423).
Shiers. George, ed. The Electric Telegraph: An Historical Anthology (1977)
Smethers, J. Steven. "Pounding Brass for the Associated Press: Delivering News by Telegraph in a Pre-Teletype Era." American Journalism 19.2 (2002): 13-30.
Tarr, Joel A., Thomas Finholt, and David Goodman. "The city and the telegraph: urban telecommunications in the pre-telephone era." Journal of Urban History 14.1 (1987): 38–80.
Thompson, Robert Luther. Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States, 1832-1866 (1947) ends in 1866; emphasis on Western Union online
U.S. Bureau of the Census. "Chapter R: Communications" in Historical Statistics of the United States (1976) online, statistics on telephones and telegraph
Wheen, Andrew. Dot-Dash to Dot.Com: How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet (Springer Praxis, 2010) excerpt
Winston, Brian. Media,Technology and Society A History From the Telegraph to the Internet (Routledge, 1998), pp 19–30, 243–248.
Wolff, Joshua D., Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845–1893. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Wolff, Joshua D. “The great monopoly”: Western Union and the American telegraph, 1845–1893" (PhD dissertation, Columbia University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2008. 3317619).
Yandell, Kay. Telegraphies: Indigeneity, Identity, and Nation in America’s Nineteenth-Century Virtual Realm (Oxford UP, 2019)
Yates, JoAnne. "The Telegraph's Effect on Nineteenth Century Markets and Firms" Business and Economic History Vol. 15,(1986), pp.149–163
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