Communication · 1837

Electric telegraph

Messages travel by electric current, and news outruns the fastest horse for the first time.

Cooke and Wheatstone patented a needle telegraph in Britain in 1837 and it went into railway service in 1839, while Samuel Morse developed his single-wire system in the United States. By 1870 telegraph lines linked most of the industrial world and time, prices and news became nearly instantaneous.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 3

Electromagnetic induction 1831
Voltaic battery 1800
Optical telegraph 1794

What it led to 7

Morse code 1844
Transatlantic telegraph cable 1858
Transcontinental railroad 1869
Telephone 1876
Radio 1895
Switching circuit theory 1937
Zuse Z3 1941

Watch

The Telegraph | Breakthrough | Episode 6: The Smartphone | PBSPBS · YouTube

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Telegrams sent in the UK Latest: 5.7M telegrams per year (1983) Source: Our World in Data

US utility patents granted since 1790 Latest: 352k patents per year (2020) Source: Our World in Data