Telegraph and telephone

The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed by Sir Charles Wheatstone and
Sir William Fothergill Cooke and opened on 9 April 1839. Both Wheatstone and Cooke
viewed their device as “an improvement to the [existing] electromagnetic telegraph” not
as a new device.On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Samuel Morse independently developed a version of the electrical telegraph that he unsuccessfully demonstrated on 2 September
1837.

Soon after he was joined by Alfred Vail who developed the register — a telegraph
terminal that integrated a logging device for recording messages to paper tape. This was
demonstrated successfully on 6 January 1838. The first transatlantic telegraph cable was
successfully completed on 27 July 1866, allowing transatlantic telecommunication for the
first time.


The conventional telephone was invented by Alexander Bell in 1876. Although in 1849
Antonio Meucci invented a device that allowed the electrical transmission of voice over a
line. Meucci’s device depended upon the electrophonic effect and was of little practical
value because it required users to place the receiver in their mouth to “hear” what was
being said. The first commercial telephone services were set-up in 1878 and 1879 on both
sides of the Atlantic in the cities of New Haven and London.

On March 25, 1925, John Logie Baird was able to demonstrate the transmission of
moving pictures at the London department store Selfridges. Baird’s device relied upon
the Nipkow disk and thus became known as the mechanical television. It formed the basis
of experimental broadcasts done by the British Broadcasting Corporation beginning
September 30, 1929. However for most of the twentieth century televisions depended
upon the cathode ray tube invented by Karl Braun. The first version of such a television
to show promise was produced by Philo Farnsworth and demonstrated to his family on
September 7, 1927.