Industrial Revolution Primary Sources | Newpaper Accounts Regarding the Telegraph

Articles published in the New York Herald and an untitled article from an unknown source

Published in 1844 and 1848

"The result is, that space and time are annihilated."

—New York Herald, 1848

It is hard to imagine the world of 1842, when Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872) was struggling to make a success of his invention, the electric telegraph.

Electric lights for reading this book? Not invented yet.

Utility poles carrying telephone, electric, and cable TV wires? Nonexistent.

News received minutes after it happens (or even as it's happening, via television)? Unimaginable.

Until 1844 long-distance communication in the United States relied on the U.S. Post Office, and even then letters were only delivered to towns and cities, not to the farms where millions of Americans lived at the time. Letters and news took days, or weeks, to arrive....