The Telegraph and Telephone

In 1832 Samuel F. B. Morse came up with the idea of an electromechanical telegraph. In 1837 the idea was revised by Leonard Gale into a working mechanical form. Then the telegraph was going to be demonstrated, but they tried underground cables and then the idea of telegraph poles came about and that worked a lot better than the

underground cables did. The first commercial telegraph line was finished in 1846, and it was set up to go from Washington DC to New York.

As you can see from the ideas above, the telephone evolved from the telegraph a little later. From the ideas above they had already learned that telegraph poles worked a lot better than underground, and as you can see today, we have telephone poles which probably originated from the inspiration of the telegraph poles.

The invention of the telegraph was very important because it was an advancement in technology and it allowed people to communicate with each other easier and faster than before.

(above is Samuel F. B. Morse, the original inventor)

Here are pictures of some telegraphs

Robin Currie "History of the Telegraph" http://historywired.si.edu/detail.cfm?ID=324 (accessed October 29, 2009).

Pictures from...

http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/archives/images/set2/telegraph1.jpg

http://de.academic.ru/pictures/dewiki/115/samuel_morse.jpg

http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=91542&rendTypeId=4