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 presumably 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.

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.

Finally, Meyer’s much later British State Telegraphs is thoroughly recommended as it gives the political context to the appropriation of the telegraphs in 1868, describing the subsequent regime and the failure of bureaucracy. Meyer scrupulously corrects the statistics given by the Post Office for the era of the Companies.

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 Telegraphic Journal (1864), The Telegraphic Journal (started in 1870 it printed memoirs and retrospective information), The Daily News, The Glasgow Herald, The Illustrated London News, The London Gazette, The Manchester Guardian, The Mechanics’ Magazine, The Morning Chronicle, Punch, The Times, The Scientific American, The Living Age, Once-a-Week and, more recently, Telektronikk (Norway)

• Post Office Directories for London, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast between 1845 and 1868 

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, a 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.telegraphsofeurope.net

 • John Jenkins’ Spark Museum  of Vintage Radio and Scientific Apparatus at www.sparkmuseum.com

• The Lords of Lightning site offers new researchers into telegraphy a good list of web sources at lordsoflightning.com

The Wheeler Gift:

The history of electric telegraphy, indeed of all things connected with electricity and magnetism, would be much easier if the gift of Schuyler Skaats Wheeler to the Library of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers of May 17, 1901 had been properly honoured.

Mr Wheeler, one of nature’s modest philanthropists, had purchased the immense collection of 6,000 books, pamphlets and periodicals relating to electricity, dating from earliest times, collected by the telegraph engineer Latimer Clark in London. With the equally generous support of Andrew Carnegie, a perpetual bequest of money was made to house, catalogue and complete Latimer Clark’s library at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Sadly the gift and bequest were dishonoured and in the 1990s the Wheeler Gift was dispersed, destroying an almost perfect archive of publications relating to electricity. Many of the works ended up with the New York Public Library, who have compounded the dishonour by failing to catalogue its acquisitions, leading to losses and thefts. Much of the Gift, even Clark’s personal correspondence, is now being peddled on the internet.

All that effectively remains is the two volume catalogue of 1909 that reveals the true value of Schuyler Skaats Wheeler’s gift and Latimer Clark’s perseverance. This, at least, offers historians a wish list of works that they need to access for a complete view of electrical communication through the ages.

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.

‘Distant Writing’ has not been written for academic use so the massive irritation to readers of reference notes has been, rightly or wrongly, forsaken. 

Special Thanks:

 
My special appreciation goes to Bill Burns of Atlantic Cable for sharing his knowledge of telegraphy, and for generously and patiently managing the constant additions and corrections to the original online version of ‘Distant Writing’ on his website, as well as for his continued advice and support.

My thanks also go to Ivor Hughes for information on his ancestor D E Hughes and his connection with the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company, to Fons Vanden Berghen for putting me right regarding Cooke & Wheatstone in Belgium and the Netherlands, and to Cor Scholten for details on the Rijkstelegraaf.

I am deeply obliged to Donard de Cogan for permission to quote from ‘The Autobiography of James Graves’ and ‘Thirty-Six Years in Telegraphic Service’. These contain detailed experiences of his wife’s kinsman, James Graves, with telegraph and cable companies.

Ann Galliard has also provided all manner of detail on the launch of the West Highland Telegraph in her native Scotland, for which I thank her. All the more appreciated because it involves the writer’s favourite concern, the Universal Private Telegraph Company.

Thanks too, to Brian P Willmot for his background details on C V Boys, George Saward and Henry Weaver, discovered in his researches into his ancestor Joseph William Willmot, an apprentice with the Electric Telegraph Company – who went on to greater things.

 
I must also thank H R Bristow of the Scientific Instrument Society for his excellent histories of Watkins & Hill and M W Theiler & Sons, two of the earliest specialist makers of telegraph apparatus in Britain.

The initial story of Cooke & Wheatstone’s telegraph in Britain has been revised through the generous and compendious advice of John Liffen, Curator of Communication at the Science Museum, London. My most sincere thanks are due to him, too.

DEDICATION

To Maria Elkington, who appealed in the ‘Telegraphic Journal’ on behalf of her sisters for a half-day off on December 24, 1864 for “the pleasure of helping to make, as well as to eat our Christmas pudding”.

Maria Elkington was born in 1843 in St Pancras, London, where her father was parish clerk. She trained to be a teacher of children but by 1864, when age 21, like over three hundred and fifty other young ladies in London, she was at work on the electric telegraph.