Kane County History: Behold The Telegraph, Elgin's First Digital Communication!

Kane County History: Behold The Telegraph, Elgin’s First Digital Communication!

/ November 1, 2019 / Comments Off on Kane County History: Behold The Telegraph, Elgin’s First Digital Communication! / Business, Clubs and Organizations, Communities, Consumers, Education, Events, Government, History, Public Service, Quality of Life, WK-Communities
  • Editor’s Note: This article is part of a weekly series on Kane County’s amazing history. Today’s article was contributed by  Elgin History Museum Intern Evan Nielsen, a sophomore at the University of Illinois.

The first digital communication was the telegraph, which used dots and dashes rather than today’s 1’s and 0’s.

Morse

Samuel Morse, an artist, conceptualized and invented the telegraph in the 1830s after learning that his wife passed away suddenly, but he did not know until a whole day later. This tragic circumstance motivated Morse to create a faster and more efficient form of communication.

Morse met Charles Thomas Jackson, an expert of electromagnetism, on a ship returning home from Europe. After seeing some of Jackson’s experiments, Morse’s idea of a single-wire telegraph became much more concrete.

This also led Morse to create a code, or a language of sorts that was able to communicate complex messages across telegraph lines via “dots and dashes.”

Morse sent the first telegram from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, MD, in 1844, and within 20 years, there were telegraph lines across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.

The telegraph spread across the United States and quickly became essential to long and short-distance communication. The development of the telegraph works together with the development of the railroad. These two inventions rapidly changed how Americans traveled and communicated.

The Telegraph Comes To Elgin

The first telegraph office as far west as Chicago opened in 1848, followed by the Chicago & North Western Railroad Line opening in 1850 (formerly the Chicago and Galena).

It can be assumed that as the railroad extended west, telegraph offices followed. Chicago quickly developed into a crucial railroad hub, putting Elgin not too far from this epicenter of expansion and railroad traffic.

An 1851 sketch of Elgin included a telegraph office, but Western Union Telegraph Company did not open their first telegraph office until 1868 Elgin on River Street.

Many Elginites celebrated the completion of the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, donating money toward a large-scale celebration in Elgin, which included the Elgin Brass Band.

The office moved to Chicago Street in 1889 and in 1897, a second telegraph office was opened by Postal Telegraph Cable Company (a company absorbed by Western Union a few decades later), also on Chicago Street. Elgin received a third telegraph office six years later, the Illinois District Telegraph Company, at the intersection of River and Chicago Street.

The speed, availability and affordability of telegrams allowed them to be used for a wide variety of purposes. In 1942, Homer Barringer of Norfolk, VA, sent a telegram to his mother in Elgin just to wish her a happy birthday.

Elgin History Museum President Al Walters and volunteer Dennis McClure (ladder) installing telegraph interactive.

Telegrams also gave the Wilcox family of Elgin a way to communicate with their son, Fred, who served in World War II and was stationed all around the country. It was in wartime when the telegraph proved to be incredibly reliable and ideal for rapid communication prior to the improvement of nationwide phone lines.

And the communication surrounding the death of a loved one, the reason that lead Morse to invent the telegraph, became much more efficient. In 1964, Alys Brandolf of Elgin was able to learn of her father’s dire medical condition in a timely manner, and was able to see him before he passed away, unlike Samuel Morse with his wife.

Listed in Elgin city directories through the 1990s, Western Union had over 100 years of telegraph service locally. Although Western Union still operates as a financial service and communications business today, the company sent out its last telegram in 2006.

The Elgin History Museum is working with telegraph collector John Hora to install an interactive telegraph in the museum’s exhibits. The evolution of communication is a relevant way to connect visitors of all ages to understanding historical timelines.

From letters to the telegraph and early phones, there is a direct line to personal cell phones and computers.

Read The Kane County History Series!

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