Essay On What Effect Did The Telegraph Have On American Communication

In the beginning of the 19th century, cities were growing and railroads were expanding, but people couldn't send or receive messages in a short amount of time. One example of how news and messages were transmitted was the Pony Express. There were some electrical communications, but they were either too slow or too complicated. Railroads were helping expand the country quickly, they were connecting cities to each other, but there needed to be some form of communication to pass messages throughout America. That is what Samuel Morse and his new system of telegraphy successfully achieved.
In the early 1800’s, all of the required parts that were needed to build an electrical communication system had been discovered. The most important of these were the battery by Volta, the relationship between electric current and magnetism by Oersted, and the electromagnet by Henry (Oersted). The only thing that …show more content…
Although the invention of the telegraph happened before the war, the technology found new uses in wartime. In 1861, the year the Civil War began, a telegraph wire was built all the way from New York to San Francisco (Mountjoy). The Civil War was one of the first demonstrations of the military value of the telegraph because of its ability to control the deployment of troops and military intelligence (Mountjoy). The military made use of the nation’s many miles of telegraph line to send and receive messages quickly. This helped transmit tactics to the soldiers quicker than a messenger could and also give updates to the commanders on the outcome of the battles. “The Army often carried telegraph lines with it to lay down for future communications” (Mountjoy). During the war, the public also benefitted from new ways to use the telegraph. Newspaper reporters submitted their stories about the battles through the telegraph wire (Mountjoy). Needless to say, the American Civil War was shaped by the