Author: Solymar, Laszlo

Source: Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Volume 25, Number 3, June 2000 , pp. 203-210(8)

Publisher: Maney Publishing

Abstract:

Until the invention of the electric telegraph in the 1830s, transferring messages at speeds greater than that of a galloping horse was on the whole an unreliable process and one that could produce ambiguous results. The electric telegraph was pioneered on the Continent, but commercialisation was left to the Englishmen Charles Wheatstone and William Fothergill Cooke, who built the first public line in 1839. From that date until well after the end of the First World War, the British dominance of worldwide telegraph cable production and ownership was overwhelming. This article traces some of the more significant eff ects of the telegraph in general, and of the British telegraphic hegemony in particular, in the spheres of politics, international diplomacy, and law and order.

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/030801800679233

Affiliations: Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, UK

Publication date: 2000-06-01

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