SOURCES
Sources: Books & Major Articles
There has been little recent writing or research on the telegraph in Britain; although there are several good reprints and on-line republications of old works. I have tried to use only sources contemporary with events.
• Electric Telegraph, a Social and Economic History; J L Kieve, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1973
• Cooke and Wheatstone and the Invention of the Electric Telegraph; Geoffrey Hubbard, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1965
• Telegraph Manual; Taliaferro Preston Shaffner, Pudney & Russell, New York, 1859
• Handbook to the Electric Telegraph; Staff of the Electric Telegraph Company, W Scales and W M Clark, London, 1849
• Statement of the Case of the Electric & International Telegraph Company against the government Bill for Acquiring the Telegraphs; Robert Grimston, Effingham Wilson, London, 1868
• Abridgements of Specifications relating to Electricity and Magnetism, their generation and applications; Bennett Woodcroft, Commissioners of Patents, London, 1859
• Annals of British Legislation; being a classified and analysed summary of public bills, statutes, accounts and papers, reports of committees and of commissioners, and sessional papers generally, of the Houses of Lords and Commons; Leone Levi, Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1861
• Annales télégraphiques; Dunod, éditeur, Libraire des Corps Impériaux des Ponts et Chaussées et des Mines, Paris, Tomes 1859, 1860 et 1861
• On the Analogy between the Post Office, Telegraphs, and other systems of conveyance of the United Kingdom as regards government control; W S Jevons, read at the Manchester Statistical Society, April 10th, 1867
• American Telegraphy and Encyclopaedia of the Tele-graph; William Maver, Maver Publishing Co., New York, USA, 1912
• Atmospheric Railways - a Victorian Venture in Silent Speed; Charles Hadfield, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1967
• Classics of Communication; Fons Vanden Berghen, Crédit Communal, Brussels, Belgium, 1999
• Correspondence on the Subject of the Purchase of the Telegraphs 1873-4; H M Treasury, London, 1875
• Curiosities of Communication; Anon., Charles Knight, London, 1851
• The Danish Monopoly on Telegraph in Japan; Eiichi Itoh, Keio Communication Review, No 29, 2007
• Digitale Kommunikation in der k.k. Monarchie - Die Errichtung der Elektrischen Telegraphie in Österreich um 1850; Franz Pichler, Elektrotechnik und informationstechnik, Linz, Austria, 2003
• Discussion on the Electric Telegraph; I K Brunel, E Clark, J L Clark, C W Siemens, F Whishaw and others, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, March 2, 1852 (Also The Electric Telegraph and On the Electric Telegraph, same date)
• The Domestic Telegraph; Chamber’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts, Edinburgh, De-cember 1863
• Early Victorian telegraphs in London’s topography, history and archaeology; Francis Celoria, in ‘Collectanea Londiniensia’, London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, London, 1978
• On the Electric Telegraph, and the principal improvements in its Construction; Frederick Richard Window, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, March 2, 1852 (Also The Electric Telegraph and Discussion on the Electric Telegraph, same date)
• The Electric Telegraph in The Pictorial Handbook of London; Anon., Henry G Bohn, London, 1854
• The Electric Telegraph in The Quarterly Review; Anon., John Murray, London, July, 1854
• The Electric Telegraph, its History and Progress; Edward Highton, John Weale, London, 1852
• The Electric Telegraph Popularised; Dionysius Lardner, Lockwood & Co., London, 1860 (Second edition, slightly updated from 1855)
• The Electric Telegraph; Dionysius Lardner and Edward Brailsford Bright, Lockwood & Co., London, 1867 (Third edition, updated and with Atlantic cables) • The Electric Telegraph in British India; W B O’Shaughnessy, MD, FRS, The Hon East India Company, London, 1853
• The Electric Telegraph; its History, Theory and Practical Application; Charles Coles Adley, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, March 2, 1852 (Also On the Electric Telegraph and Discus-sion on the Electric Telegraph, same date)
• The Electric Telegraph; its Influence and Geographical Distribution; Marshall Lefferts, American Geographical and Statistical Society, New York, USA, 1856
• The Electric Telegraph; was it invented by Professor Wheatstone? William Fothergill Cooke, privately printed in London, 1857
• The Electricians’ Directory with Handbook for 1885; George Tucker, London 1885
• Encyclopaedia Britannica; 1911 edition, on-line
• From Elektron to E-commerce; Stewart Ash, Submarine Telecoms Forum, Issues 14, 15 and 17, WFN Strategies, Potomac Falls, Virginia, USA, 2004
• A Handbook of Practical Telegraphy; Robert Spelman Culley, Longman, Green, London, 1863
• The Handbook of the Telegraph; R Bond, Virtue Brothers, London, 1862
• Heroes of the Telegraph; J Munro, Religious Tract Society, London, 1891
• History of the Great Western Railway; E T MacDermot and C R Clinker, Ian Allan, Shepperton, 1964
• History, Theory & Practice of the Electric Telegraph; Geo. Prescott, Boston, USA, 1866
• Historical Sketch of the Electric Telegraph; Alexander Jones, Putnam, New York, USA, 1852
• The History of Telecommunications in Jersey; The Marett Family, marett.org/telecom/index.html
• History of Telegraphy; Ken Beauchamp, Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, 2002
• History & Progress of the Electric Telegraph; Robert Sabine, Lockwood & Co., London, 1872
• A History of Wireless Telegraphy; John Joseph Fahie, William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1899
• Die indo-europäische Telegraphenlinie in Originaldokumenten; Fritz Jörn, 2004, www.joern.de/in-dolinie.htm.
• Lands of the Slave and the Free; Henry A Murray, George Routledge, London, 1855
• Law Reports of the Chancery and Exchequer Courts of England; London, 1838 to 1870
• Lectures on the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph; Laurence Turnbull, Philadelphia, USA, 1852
• The Nervous System of the Metropolis, in Our Social Bees; Andrew Wynter MD, Robert Hardwick, Lon-don, 1861
• On the Electric Telegraph between England and India; E C Cracknell, Royal Society of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 1869
• The Old Telegraphs; Geoffrey Wilson, Phillimore, London, 1976
• Paris Universal Exposition - Telegraphic Apparatus; S F B Morse, Washington, USA, 1868
• The Post Office Telegraphs and their Financial Results; W S Jevons, Fortnightly Review, London, December, 1875
• The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of Great Britain; F A Philbrick & W A S Westoby, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, London, 1881
• Private Telegraph Companies of Great Britain and their Stamps; Raymond Lister, Golden Head Press, Cambridge, 1961
• Report from the Select Committee on East India Communications, HM government, London, 1866
• Report of the Joint Committee to inquire into the Construction of Submarine Telegraph Cables, HM gov-ernment, London, 1861
• Reuters’ Century 1851-1951; Graham Storey, London, 1951
• The Rise & Fall of Government Telegraphy in Britain; C R Perry, Business & Economic History, London, 1997
• The Rise & Progress of the Telegraphs; Maria Susan Rye, London, 1859
• Royal Meteorological Society; Papers and Membership lists, 1851 to 1868, online
• Shaffner’s Telegraph Companion, devoted to the science and art of the Morse American telegraph; Tal P Shaffner, Pudney & Russell, New York, USA, 1854
• State or Tynwald Laws of the Isle of Man
• Stokers and Pokers; F B Head, John Murray, London, 1849
• On Submarine Telegraphs; Frederick Richard Window, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, January 13, 1857
• The Suction Post, in Our Social Bees; Andrew Wynter MD, Robert Hardwick, London, 1861
• Telegraphic Railways; or The Single Way; William Fothergill Cooke, Simkin, Marshall & Co., London, 1842
• The Telegraph; Sir William Preece and J Sivewright, London, 1876
• Telegraphs in Victorian London; John Durham, Golden Head Press, Cambridge, 1959
• Telegraph Manipulation; C V Walker, George Knight & Sons, London, 1850
• Telegraph & Telephone Stamps of the World; S Hiscocks, Woking, 1982
• The Telegraph, A History of Morse’s Invention; Lewis Coe, McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA, 1993
• Town Telegraphs in Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers; Andrew Wynter MD, Robert Hardwick, London, 1863
• Telegraph and Travel; Colonel Sir Frederic John Goldsmid, CB, KCSI, Macmillan & Company, London, 1874 • Universal Private Telegraph Company 1861 - 1870; Letter Books and files, BT Archive, London
• The Varley Family: Engineers and artists: John Varley Jeffery, Royal Society of Arts & Sciences, London, 1997
• The Working Women of England; Joseph Foulkes Winks, The Christian Pioneer, Leicester, 1859
• Bradshaw’s Railway Manual, Shareholders’ Guide & Official Directory; (an annual detailing railway and associated companies), London, 1848 to 1921
Regarding the Electric Telegraph Company, according to one source, “When the transfer of the undertaking of this Company to the Postmaster-General took place, the whole of the papers of the Company were destroyed by order of the directors.” (Philbrick & Westoby 1881)
Kieve’s work is a fine piece of original research on the economy of the telegraph, particularly the final years of the companies – I have tried not to replicate his efforts so have used other sources from the period.
Beauchamp’s more recent work, published, and pre-sumably edited, after his death, sadly has several commercial and technical inaccuracies.
The best composite period source is Tal Shaffner, but like everyone else he got nowhere with prying information out of the Electric Telegraph Company.
Dionysius Lardner, the great scientific populariser, is also to be recommended, in this and many other subjects.
Morse’s work for the Paris Exposition is an embarrassing self-justification but he used his name to acquire a large amount of data through the US Embassies abroad; the Electric Telegraph Company refused, as usual, to co-operate. It will come as a surprise to most people interested in the subject to learn from this that needle instruments are not “telegraphs” at all but are really “semaphores”.
To any Americans who might take offence at this view of Morse; the Electric Telegraph by W F Cooke cited above is even worse in its self-serving grind.
Researchers are very specifically warned against the value of the statistics published by the Post Office in regard to the final years of the telegraph companies. They bear little or no relationship to the companies’ official returns made to the Board of Trade before 1870.
Finally, for a period view of the state of the British telegraphs in government hands subsequently in the 1870s Stanley Jevons analytical article in the Fortnightly Review is the best source.
Sources: Technical
• United States Patent Office
• The Patent Office (UK)
The immense USPO archives are available on-line, partially indexed by Google. The UKPO, now called the Intellectual Property Office, is paper-based and relies on a privately-produced index.
Sources: Journals
The period between 1836 and 1860 saw a huge increase in business and technical journalism in Britain; these journals – dealing primarily with the railway interest – published a large amount of government statistics, semi-scientific information and, what were basically, company press releases. W F Cooke was particularly active in placing articles in the business press in England; but apart from in the earliest period the companies were not.
• The Builder, The Railway Times, The Railway Chronicle, The Railway Record, Mining Gazette, Shareholders’ Guardian, The Telegraph Journal (although started in 1870 it printed memoirs and retrospective information), The Daily News, The Illustrated London News, The Manchester Guardian, The Morning Chronicle, The Times, The Scientific American, The Living Age, Once-a-Week
• Post Office Directories for London, Manchester and Glasgow between 1848 and 1868
These are all available at the Newspaper Library of the British Library, Colindale, London.
Sources: Internet
Unless one is a collector of ‘telegraphiana’ there is little original relating to telegraphy on the internet, the impressive exceptions are:
• Bill Burns’ fine work on the history of underwater telegraph cables at www. atlantic-cable.com
• James B Calvert, The Telegraph, History of the Electromagnetic Telegraph, at www.du.edu/~jcalvert /tel/telhom.htm
• Fons Vanden Berghen’s wonderful, ever expanding, telegraphic picture library, an adjunct to his book Classics of Communication (q.v.) at www.far-adic.net/~gsraven/fons_images/fons_museum .html
On Sources:
This work has been a collation of small pieces acquired over a long time. The use of original printed sources from the nineteenth century has the defect of being unverifiable; although checks have been made, all manner of authorial and compositors’ errors might have crept in, let alone the writer’s own contributions; corrections and comments are therefore welcome. This has not been written for academic use so the massive irritation to readers of reference notes has been, rightly or wrongly, forsaken.
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