The Telegraph

by Shawn B
(Queens NY)

This was something we had to be creative about in school. I was in Junior High and had to build a telegraph. We created it out of wood, inserted a nail, cut a tin foil and placed it right above the nail; there was wire wrapped around the nail attached to a battery and a light bulb. Every time you touched the piece of tin to the nail the bulb lit up.

Barry's Response - Thanks for your brief description, Shawn. This device did demonstrate how early communications were made possible by electric transmission. And greatly sped up long-distance communications as early as the beginning of the 1800's, making it possible to do so without using paper (and pony express) for the first time.

Even more interesting was the media of communications that followed, eventually leading to telex, where a network of so-called teleprinters, sent text-messages, starting in the 1930's. The latest news messages transmitted over these lines for papers and radio stations to transmit.

Then came, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) and eventually the internet. The rest is all history.

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