A Story of
The Telegraph
Telegraph History
Telegraph, a machine for communicating intelligence to a distance, usually by means of preconcerted signals to which some convenient meaning is attached.
The name Semiphore was also applied to some of the machines used for effecting telegraphic communication, which in an extended sense may be considered to embrace every means of conveying intelligence by gestures and visible signs, as flags, lanterns, rockets, blue lights, beacon fires, etc., or by audible signals as the firing of guns, the blowing of trumpets, the beating of drums or gongs, as well as by the machine specially provided for the purpose.
Although telegraph communication as a means of conveying any required intelligence is an invention of recent date, the use of signals for the speedy transmission of messages as might be previously arranged between persons is a practice derived from the most remote antiquity. The use of beacon fires for example, as a means of giving warning of the approach of an enemy, is alluded to by the Prophet Jeremiah, who wrote about six centuries before the Christian era, and who warns the Benjamites to set up a sign of fire in Beth-Haccerem, for evil appeareth out of the north and great destruction (Jeremiah VI., 1).
The fine description given by Acchylus in his Agamemnon, of the application of a line of fire signals to communicate the intelligence of the fall of Troy is often referred to as an early instance of this kind of telegraphic dispatch.
This simple means of spreading an alarm, or communicating intelligence, is described by Scott in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and in a note he refers to an act of the Scottish Parliament in 1455, c. 48, which directs that one bale or faggot shall be the warning of the approach of the English in any manner, two bales, that they are coming indeed, and four bales blazing beside each other that the enemy are in great force.
Such signals though best adapted to give information by night, were also available in day time, when they appeared as dense columns of smoke.