September 12, 2013 at 20:11Telegraph History at a Glance
At school for the summer they always asked a heavy list of literature - usually I was short of no more than half, and I read all of it in brief. “War and Peace” on five pages - what could be better ... I’ll tell you about the history of telegraphs in a similar genre, but the general meaning should be clear.
The word "Telegraph" comes from two ancient Greek words - tele (far) and grapho (I write). In the modern sense, it’s just a means of transmitting signals via wires, radio or other communication channels ... Although the first telegraphs were wireless - long before learning to correspond and transmit any information over long distances, people learned to bounce, wink, make bonfires and knocking on drums - all this can also be considered telegraphs.
Believe it or not, but once in the Netherlands they generally transmitted messages (primitive) with the help of windmills, of which there were a great many - they simply stopped the wings in certain positions. Perhaps this is exactly what once (in 1792) inspired Claude Schaff to create the first (among the non-primitive) telegraphs. The invention received the name “Heliograph” (optical telegraph) - as the name implies, this device allowed transmitting information due to sunlight, or rather, due to its reflection in the mirror system.
Between the cities, in direct visibility from each other, special towers were erected on which huge articulated wings of semaphores were installed - the telegraph operator received the message and immediately transmitted it further, moving the wings with levers. In addition to the installation itself, Claude came up with his own character language, which allowed transmitting messages in such a way at a speed of up to 2 words per minute. By the way, the longest line (1200 km) was built in the 19th century between St. Petersburg and Warsaw - from end to end the signal passed in 15 minutes.
Electrical telegraphs became possible only when people began to study the nature of electricity more closely, that is, around the 18th century. The first article on the electric telegraph appeared on the pages of a scientific journal in 1753, authored by a certain “CM” - the author of the project proposed sending electric charges through numerous insulated wires connecting points A and B. The number of wires should correspond to the number of letters in the alphabet: “ Balls at the ends of the wires light bodies with letters will be electrified and attracted". Later it became known that under the "CM" hid the Scottish scientist Charles Morrison, who, unfortunately, could not establish the correct operation of his device. But he acted nobly: he treated other scientists with his own ideas and gave them an idea, and they soon proposed various improvements to the scheme.
Among the first was the Geneva physicist Georg Lesage, who in 1774 built the first working electrostatic telegraph (he also proposed laying telegraph wires underground in clay pipes in 1782). All the same 24 (or 25) wiring isolated from each other, each has its own letter of the alphabet; the ends of the wires are connected to the "electric pendulum" - transmitting a charge of electricity (then still rubbing hard ebony sticks), you can make the corresponding electric pendulum of another station get out of equilibrium. Not the fastest option (transferring a small phrase could take 2-3 hours), but at least it worked. 13 years later, the physicist Lesage was improved by the physicist Lomon, who reduced the number of necessary wiring to one.
Electric telegraphy began to develop rapidly, but really brilliant results were obtained only when it was not static electricity that was used, but galvanic current - food for thought in this direction was first (in 1800) thrown by Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Gerolamo Umberto Volta. The first deflecting effect of the galvanic current on the magnetic needle in 1802 was noticed by the Italian scientist Romanesi, and already in 1809 the first telegraph was invented by the Munich academic Semmering, based on the chemical effects of the current.
Later, in the process of creating the telegraph, a Russian scientist decided to participate, namely Pavel Lvovich Schilling - in 1832 he became the creator of the first electromagnetic telegraph (and later - the original code for work). The design of the fruit of his efforts was this: five magnetic arrows suspended on silk threads moved inside the "multipliers" (coils with a large number of turns of wire). Depending on the direction of the current, the magnetic arrow went in one direction or another, and a small cardboard disk turned with the arrow. Using two current directions and an original code (made up of combinations of disc deflection of six multipliers), it was possible to transmit all letters of the alphabet and even numbers.
Schilling was asked to make a telegraph line between Kronstadt and St. Petersburg, but in 1837 he died and the project froze. Only after almost 20 years, another scientist, Boris Semenovich Jacobi, resumed it, among other things, he thought about how to record the received signals, began to work on a draft telegraph project. The task was completed - pencils attached to the anchor of the electromagnet recorded conditional icons.
Also, Carl Gauss and Wilhelm Weber (Germany, 1833) and Cook and Wheatstone (Great Britain, 1837) came up with their electromagnetic telegraphs (or even the “language” for them). And, I almost forgot about Samuel Morse, although I already talked about him in detail. In general, we finally learned how to transmit an electromagnetic signal over long distances. It started — first simple messages, then correspondent networks began to telegraph news for many newspapers, then whole telegraph agencies appeared.
The problem was the transfer of information between continents - how to stretch more than 3,000 km (from Europe to America) of wires across the Atlantic Ocean? Surprisingly, that's exactly what they decided to do. The initiator was Cyrus West Field, one of the founders of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, who arranged hard parties for local oligarchs and convinced them to sponsor the project. The result was a “tangle” of cable weighing 3,000 tons (consisting of 530 thousand kilometers of copper wire), which by August 5, 1858 successfully wound the largest at that time British and US warships, Agamemnon and Niagara, along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. . Later, however, the cable broke - not the first time, but it was repaired.
The inconvenience of the Morse telegraph was that only specialists could decrypt its code, while it was completely incomprehensible to ordinary people. Therefore, in subsequent years, many inventors worked to create an apparatus that registers the text of the message, and not just the telegraph code. The most famous among them was the typewriter Yuse:
Partially to mechanize (lighten) the work of telegraph operators, Thomas Edison decided - he proposed to completely exclude human participation by recording telegrams on a punched tape.
The tape was made on a reperforator - a device for punching holes in a paper tape in accordance with the signs of the telegraph code coming from the telegraph transmitter.
The repertorator received telegrams at transit telegraph stations, and then transmitted them automatically using a transmitter, thereby eliminating the time-consuming manual processing of transit telegrams (tape sticker with the characters printed on it on the form and the subsequent transfer of all characters manually, from the keyboard). There were also reperfotransmitters - devices for receiving and transmitting telegrams that perform the functions of a reperforator and a transmitter at the same time.
In 1843, faxes appeared (few people know that they appeared before the telephone) - the Scottish watchmaker, Alexander Bane, invented them. His device (which he himself called the Bane telegraph) was capable of transmitting copies of not only text but also images (albeit in disgusting quality) over long distances. In 1855, his invention was improved by Giovanni Caselli, finalizing the quality of image transmission.
True, the process was quite labor-consuming, judge for yourself: the original image had to be transferred to a special lead foil, which was “scanned” by a special pen attached to the pendulum. Dark and light portions of the image were transmitted in the form of electrical impulses and reproduced on the receiving device by another pendulum, which “drew” on special moistened paper impregnated with a solution of potassium hydroxide. The device was called pantelegraf and later became very popular throughout the world (including in Russia).
In 1872, the French inventor Jean Maurice Emile Bodot designed his telegraph apparatus of repeated action - he was able to transmit two or more messages on one wire in one direction. The Bodo device and created by its principle were called start-stop.
But in addition to the device itself, the inventor also came up with a very successful telegraph code (Baudot Code), which subsequently gained great popularity and received the name International Telegraph Code No. 1 (ITA1). Further modifications to the design of the start-stop telegraph apparatus led to the creation of teleprinters (teletypes), and a unit of information transfer speed - baud - was named after the scientist.
In 1930, a start-stop telegraph appeared with a telephone-type disk dialer (teletype). Such a device, among other things, made it possible to personify telegraph network subscribers and make their quick connection. In the future, such devices began to be called "telex" (from the words "telegraph" and "exchange").
In our time, telegraphs in many countries have been abandoned as a morally obsolete method of communication, although they still use it in Russia. On the other hand, the same traffic light can also be considered a telegraph to some extent, and it is already used at almost every intersection. So wait, write off the old people from the accounts;)
For the period from 1753 to 1839 in the history of the telegraph there are about 50 different systems - some of them remained on paper, but there were also those that became the foundation of modern telegraphy. Time passed, the technology and appearance of the devices changed, but the principle of operation remained the same.
What now? Inexpensive SMS messages are slowly disappearing - they are being replaced by all kinds of free solutions such as iMessage / WhatsApp / Viber / Telegram and all kinds of ICQ-Skype there. You can write the message " 22:22 - make a wish”And to be sure that a person (possibly located on the other side of the globe) will most likely even have time to make him up in time. However, you are no longer small and understand everything yourself ... better try to predict what will happen with the transmission of information in the future, after a similar period of time?
Photo reports from all museums (with all telegraphs) will be published a little later on the pages of our "historical" special project , but for now you can read:
" Anatomy of a communication mast
" About Morse code
" History of the development of mail
" LTE in St. Petersburg
" Overview of LTE devices
! important: This article does not purport to be complete and reliable.
The word "Telegraph" comes from two ancient Greek words - tele (far) and grapho (I write). In the modern sense, it’s just a means of transmitting signals via wires, radio or other communication channels ... Although the first telegraphs were wireless - long before learning to correspond and transmit any information over long distances, people learned to bounce, wink, make bonfires and knocking on drums - all this can also be considered telegraphs.
Believe it or not, but once in the Netherlands they generally transmitted messages (primitive) with the help of windmills, of which there were a great many - they simply stopped the wings in certain positions. Perhaps this is exactly what once (in 1792) inspired Claude Schaff to create the first (among the non-primitive) telegraphs. The invention received the name “Heliograph” (optical telegraph) - as the name implies, this device allowed transmitting information due to sunlight, or rather, due to its reflection in the mirror system.
Between the cities, in direct visibility from each other, special towers were erected on which huge articulated wings of semaphores were installed - the telegraph operator received the message and immediately transmitted it further, moving the wings with levers. In addition to the installation itself, Claude came up with his own character language, which allowed transmitting messages in such a way at a speed of up to 2 words per minute. By the way, the longest line (1200 km) was built in the 19th century between St. Petersburg and Warsaw - from end to end the signal passed in 15 minutes.
| While in prison, many prisoners have the opportunity to stay in touch - high technology even reached that place. Previously, messages were often transmitted by tapping: using a character table (of 6 columns and 6 lines), the column was tapped first, and then the line of the desired character. And then the "dash" from the Morse code to "tap" is much more difficult than the "point";) |
Among the first was the Geneva physicist Georg Lesage, who in 1774 built the first working electrostatic telegraph (he also proposed laying telegraph wires underground in clay pipes in 1782). All the same 24 (or 25) wiring isolated from each other, each has its own letter of the alphabet; the ends of the wires are connected to the "electric pendulum" - transmitting a charge of electricity (then still rubbing hard ebony sticks), you can make the corresponding electric pendulum of another station get out of equilibrium. Not the fastest option (transferring a small phrase could take 2-3 hours), but at least it worked. 13 years later, the physicist Lesage was improved by the physicist Lomon, who reduced the number of necessary wiring to one.
Electric telegraphy began to develop rapidly, but really brilliant results were obtained only when it was not static electricity that was used, but galvanic current - food for thought in this direction was first (in 1800) thrown by Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Gerolamo Umberto Volta. The first deflecting effect of the galvanic current on the magnetic needle in 1802 was noticed by the Italian scientist Romanesi, and already in 1809 the first telegraph was invented by the Munich academic Semmering, based on the chemical effects of the current.
Later, in the process of creating the telegraph, a Russian scientist decided to participate, namely Pavel Lvovich Schilling - in 1832 he became the creator of the first electromagnetic telegraph (and later - the original code for work). The design of the fruit of his efforts was this: five magnetic arrows suspended on silk threads moved inside the "multipliers" (coils with a large number of turns of wire). Depending on the direction of the current, the magnetic arrow went in one direction or another, and a small cardboard disk turned with the arrow. Using two current directions and an original code (made up of combinations of disc deflection of six multipliers), it was possible to transmit all letters of the alphabet and even numbers.
Schilling was asked to make a telegraph line between Kronstadt and St. Petersburg, but in 1837 he died and the project froze. Only after almost 20 years, another scientist, Boris Semenovich Jacobi, resumed it, among other things, he thought about how to record the received signals, began to work on a draft telegraph project. The task was completed - pencils attached to the anchor of the electromagnet recorded conditional icons.
Also, Carl Gauss and Wilhelm Weber (Germany, 1833) and Cook and Wheatstone (Great Britain, 1837) came up with their electromagnetic telegraphs (or even the “language” for them). And, I almost forgot about Samuel Morse, although I already talked about him in detail. In general, we finally learned how to transmit an electromagnetic signal over long distances. It started — first simple messages, then correspondent networks began to telegraph news for many newspapers, then whole telegraph agencies appeared.
The problem was the transfer of information between continents - how to stretch more than 3,000 km (from Europe to America) of wires across the Atlantic Ocean? Surprisingly, that's exactly what they decided to do. The initiator was Cyrus West Field, one of the founders of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, who arranged hard parties for local oligarchs and convinced them to sponsor the project. The result was a “tangle” of cable weighing 3,000 tons (consisting of 530 thousand kilometers of copper wire), which by August 5, 1858 successfully wound the largest at that time British and US warships, Agamemnon and Niagara, along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. . Later, however, the cable broke - not the first time, but it was repaired.
The inconvenience of the Morse telegraph was that only specialists could decrypt its code, while it was completely incomprehensible to ordinary people. Therefore, in subsequent years, many inventors worked to create an apparatus that registers the text of the message, and not just the telegraph code. The most famous among them was the typewriter Yuse:
Partially to mechanize (lighten) the work of telegraph operators, Thomas Edison decided - he proposed to completely exclude human participation by recording telegrams on a punched tape.
The tape was made on a reperforator - a device for punching holes in a paper tape in accordance with the signs of the telegraph code coming from the telegraph transmitter.
The repertorator received telegrams at transit telegraph stations, and then transmitted them automatically using a transmitter, thereby eliminating the time-consuming manual processing of transit telegrams (tape sticker with the characters printed on it on the form and the subsequent transfer of all characters manually, from the keyboard). There were also reperfotransmitters - devices for receiving and transmitting telegrams that perform the functions of a reperforator and a transmitter at the same time.
In 1843, faxes appeared (few people know that they appeared before the telephone) - the Scottish watchmaker, Alexander Bane, invented them. His device (which he himself called the Bane telegraph) was capable of transmitting copies of not only text but also images (albeit in disgusting quality) over long distances. In 1855, his invention was improved by Giovanni Caselli, finalizing the quality of image transmission.
True, the process was quite labor-consuming, judge for yourself: the original image had to be transferred to a special lead foil, which was “scanned” by a special pen attached to the pendulum. Dark and light portions of the image were transmitted in the form of electrical impulses and reproduced on the receiving device by another pendulum, which “drew” on special moistened paper impregnated with a solution of potassium hydroxide. The device was called pantelegraf and later became very popular throughout the world (including in Russia).
In 1872, the French inventor Jean Maurice Emile Bodot designed his telegraph apparatus of repeated action - he was able to transmit two or more messages on one wire in one direction. The Bodo device and created by its principle were called start-stop.
But in addition to the device itself, the inventor also came up with a very successful telegraph code (Baudot Code), which subsequently gained great popularity and received the name International Telegraph Code No. 1 (ITA1). Further modifications to the design of the start-stop telegraph apparatus led to the creation of teleprinters (teletypes), and a unit of information transfer speed - baud - was named after the scientist.
In 1930, a start-stop telegraph appeared with a telephone-type disk dialer (teletype). Such a device, among other things, made it possible to personify telegraph network subscribers and make their quick connection. In the future, such devices began to be called "telex" (from the words "telegraph" and "exchange").
In our time, telegraphs in many countries have been abandoned as a morally obsolete method of communication, although they still use it in Russia. On the other hand, the same traffic light can also be considered a telegraph to some extent, and it is already used at almost every intersection. So wait, write off the old people from the accounts;)
For the period from 1753 to 1839 in the history of the telegraph there are about 50 different systems - some of them remained on paper, but there were also those that became the foundation of modern telegraphy. Time passed, the technology and appearance of the devices changed, but the principle of operation remained the same.
What now? Inexpensive SMS messages are slowly disappearing - they are being replaced by all kinds of free solutions such as iMessage / WhatsApp / Viber / Telegram and all kinds of ICQ-Skype there. You can write the message " 22:22 - make a wish”And to be sure that a person (possibly located on the other side of the globe) will most likely even have time to make him up in time. However, you are no longer small and understand everything yourself ... better try to predict what will happen with the transmission of information in the future, after a similar period of time?
Photo reports from all museums (with all telegraphs) will be published a little later on the pages of our "historical" special project , but for now you can read:
" Anatomy of a communication mast
" About Morse code
" History of the development of mail
" LTE in St. Petersburg
" Overview of LTE devices
! important: This article does not purport to be complete and reliable.