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Introduction
Cooke & Wheatstone
The Electric Telegraph Company
Competitors & Allies
The Universal Telegraph
Bain
Non Competitors
How the Companies Worked
What the Companies Charged
The Companies and the News
The Companies and the Weather
The Companies Abroad
The Companies' Foreign Operations
Railway Signal Telegraphy 1838-68
Telegraph at War 1854-68
Technical Detail
Finale
Telegraph Stations 1862
Instrument Gallery
Telegraph Maps 1852-68
Telegraph Company Stamps
The Rest of the World
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21. TELEGRAPH MAPS 1852 - 1868

Great Britain 1852  

Click the thumbnail above for a greatly enlarged coloured version of
“The Electric Telegraph Company,
Chart of the Company’s Telegraphic System
in Great Britain, 1852”
published by the Electric Telegraph Company and printed by Day & Company, lithographers to the Queen, 17 Gate Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London
A large double-elephant size, 40 inches by 26¾  inches, paper map “dissected” and mounted on cloth for convenient folding, and fitting into a protective slip case.
It was updated and reprinted regularly in the 1850s and 1860s,
versions dated 1852, 1853, 1859, 1860 (small) and 1866 are known 

Courtesy of the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Institution Libraries  


Europe 1856

ETC Europe 1856

Click the thumbnail above for a greatly enlarged coloured version of
“The Electric & International Telegraph Company's
Map of the Telegraph Lines of Europe”

Published under the Authority of the Electric Telegraph Company by
Day & Son, Lithographers to the Queen
August 1, 1856

The map includes all of the several companies' telegraph circuits in
Great Britain and Ireland not just the Electric's own lines
It was lithographed in colour from stone to a size 30 inches by 36 inches,
on paper,“dissected” and mounted on cloth
See below for details of other versions, mostly printed only in black
(Click on Previous Page to resume)

Courtesy of Princeton University Library


Europe 1860  

Click the thumbnail above for a greatly enlarged version of
“The Telegraphs of Europe”
published by the Electric & International Telegraph Company in 1860.
This map was a reprint to a double-elephant size, 40 inches by 26¾  inches, 
of an earlier 30 inch by 36 inch version which accounts for the presence of
the original, short-lived Atlantic Cable of 1858. Versions dated 1854, 1855, 1856, 1859, 1861, 1863, 1865 are known

The map was compiled by Francis Young, a professional teacher, and was engraved on steel by Lewis Becker by his patent ‘Omnigraph’ process.
(Click on Previous Page to resume )


With thanks to Bill Burns of
Atlantic Cable
for providing the scans of the 1852 and 1860 maps

The East 1865  

 Click the thumbnail above for a greatly enlarged version of the
 “Telegraph Map of the Eastern World”
published in the ‘Illustrated London News’ on July 8, 1865.

Of note is the limited mileage of electric telegraph outside of Europe
Drawn and Engraved by John Dower, FRGS, Pentonville, London
(Click on Previous Page to resume )  


London 1866

London District 1866S

Click the thumbnail above for a greatly enlarged coloured version of
A Map of the System of the London District Telegraph Company
published by the Company, around 1866
The Company's telegraph offices are numbered alphabetically from
1, Agricultural Hall, Islington,  to 95, Westminster, Houses of Parliament
(Click on Previous Page to resume )

This map has been digitally restored from a severely damaged original
Original image courtesy of the BT Archives


City Telegraphs 1868

Six diagrammatical maps prepared by government surveyors showing the telegraph stations in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester just before the appropriation:
 

Key: E Electric & International Telegraph Company; M British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company; UK United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company; UP Universal Private Telegraph Company; RS Railway Station




 



 


 
Telegraph, from the Greek “tele”, distant, and “graphos”, writing
© Copyright - Steven Roberts 2012