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British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company

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112-707: The British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company (also called the Magnetic Telegraph Company or the Magnetic ) was a provider of telegraph services and infrastructure. It was founded in 1850 by John Brett . The Magnetic became the principal competitor to the largest telegraph company in the United Kingdom, Electric Telegraph Company (the Electric), and became the leading company in Ireland. The two companies dominated

224-548: A hemp rope on the Portpatrick to Donaghadee route. This construction proved problematic because it floated (the Submarine Telegraph Company's Dover to Calais cable in 1850 was also lightweight, having no protection at all other than the insulation, but they had taken the precaution of adding periodic lead weights to sink the cable). It was laid from a schooner Reliance , assisted by tugs. The strong sea currents in

336-497: A 175-yard (160 m) long trench as well as an eight-mile (13 km) long overhead telegraph. The lines were connected at both ends to revolving dials marked with the letters of the alphabet and electrical impulses sent along the wire were used to transmit messages. Offering his invention to the Admiralty in July 1816, it was rejected as "wholly unnecessary". His account of the scheme and

448-475: A clock-face, and the signal caused a needle to indicate the letter. This early system required the receiver to be present in real time to record the message and it reached speeds of up to 15 words a minute. In 1846, Alexander Bain patented a chemical telegraph in Edinburgh. The signal current moved an iron pen across a moving paper tape soaked in a mixture of ammonium nitrate and potassium ferrocyanide, decomposing

560-409: A different political party or faction is in power. A re-nationalization process may also be called "reverse privatization". Nationalization has been used to refer to either direct state-ownership and management of an enterprise or to a government acquiring a large controlling share of a publicly listed corporation . According to research by Paasha Mahdavi, leaders who consider nationalization face

672-482: A dilemma: "nationalize and reap immediate gains while risking future prosperity, or maintain private operations, thereby passing on revenue windfalls but securing long-term fiscal streams." He argues that leaders "nationalize extractive resources to extend the duration of their power" by using "this increased capital to secure political support." Nationalization can have positive and negative effects. In 2019 research based on studies from Greenwich University found that

784-468: A few kilometers (in von Sömmering's design), with each of the telegraph receiver's wires immersed in a separate glass tube of acid. An electric current was sequentially applied by the sender through the various wires representing each letter of a message; at the recipient's end, the currents electrolysed the acid in the tubes in sequence, releasing streams of hydrogen bubbles next to each associated letter or numeral. The telegraph receiver's operator would watch

896-426: A government to take property in certain situations. Due to political risks that are involved when countries engage in international business, it is important to understand the expropriation risks and laws within each of the countries in which business is conducted in order to understand the risks as an investor in that country. Studies have found that nationalization follows a cyclical trend. Nationalization rose in

1008-451: A hammer made to strike the bell by a solenoid driven by a relay . They are so arranged that the right and left bells are struck according to whether a positive or negative pulse of current is received on the telegraph line. Such bells make a much louder sound than the clicking of a needle. The Magnetic found a method of overcoming the problem of dispersion on long submarine telegraph cables. The poorly understood phenomenon at that time

1120-470: A later stage, they are said to have undergone renationalization . Industries often subject to nationalization include telecommunications , electric power , fossil fuels , railways , airlines , iron ore , media , postal services , banks , and water (sometimes called the commanding heights of the economy ), and in many jurisdictions such entities have no history of private ownership. Nationalization may occur with or without financial compensation to

1232-674: A moving paper tape by a stylus which was operated by an electromagnet. Morse and Vail developed the Morse code signalling alphabet . On May 24, 1844, Morse sent to Vail the historic first message “ WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT " from the Capitol in Washington to the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore . The first commercial electrical telegraph was the Cooke and Wheatstone system . A demonstration four-needle system

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1344-565: A permanent magnet and connecting the coil with the transmission wires by means of the commutator. The page of Gauss's laboratory notebook containing both his code and the first message transmitted, as well as a replica of the telegraph made in the 1850s under the instructions of Weber are kept in the faculty of physics at the University of Göttingen , in Germany. Gauss was convinced that this communication would be of help to his kingdom's towns. Later in

1456-426: A practical alphabetical system in 1840 called the A.B.C. System, used mostly on private wires. This consisted of a "communicator" at the sending end and an "indicator" at the receiving end. The communicator consisted of a circular dial with a pointer and the 26 letters of the alphabet (and four punctuation marks) around its circumference. Against each letter was a key that could be pressed. A transmission would begin with

1568-488: A regional company. They shared these premises with the Submarine Telegraph Company. The company had a close relationship with the Submarine Telegraph Company who laid the first cable to France and many subsequent submarine telegraph cables to Europe. From about 1857, the Magnetic had an agreement with them that all their submarine cables were to be used only with the landlines of the Magnetic. The Magnetic also had control of

1680-545: A sensitive indicator for an electric current. Also that year, André-Marie Ampère suggested that telegraphy could be achieved by placing small magnets under the ends of a set of wires, one pair of wires for each letter of the alphabet. He was apparently unaware of Schweigger's invention at the time, which would have made his system much more sensitive. In 1825, Peter Barlow tried Ampère's idea but only got it to work over 200 feet (61 m) and declared it impractical. In 1830 William Ritchie improved on Ampère's design by placing

1792-583: A short-distance transmission of signals between two telegraphs in different rooms of his apartment. In 1836, the British government attempted to buy the design but Schilling instead accepted overtures from Nicholas I of Russia . Schilling's telegraph was tested on a 5-kilometre-long (3.1 mi) experimental underground and underwater cable, laid around the building of the main Admiralty in Saint Petersburg and

1904-405: A steady rhythm, and the usual speed of operation was 30 words per minute. By this point, reception had been automated, but the speed and accuracy of the transmission were still limited to the skill of the human operator. The first practical automated system was patented by Charles Wheatstone. The message (in Morse code ) was typed onto a piece of perforated tape using a keyboard-like device called

2016-537: A strategy to build socialism, more commonly nationalization was also undertaken and used to protect and develop industries perceived as being vital to a nation's competitiveness (such as aerospace and shipbuilding), or to protect jobs in certain industries. Nationalization has had varying levels of support throughout history. After the Second World War , nationalization was supported by social democratic and democratic socialist parties throughout Western Europe, such as

2128-467: A telegraph along the Nuremberg–Fürth railway line , built in 1835 as the first German railroad, which was the first earth-return telegraph put into service. By 1837, William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone had co-developed a telegraph system which used a number of needles on a board that could be moved to point to letters of the alphabet. Any number of needles could be used, depending on

2240-489: A total line length of over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) for proof of principle testing. Dispersion was not eliminated from submarine cables until loading coils started to be used on them from 1906 onwards. The company's first objective, in 1852, was to provide the first telegraph service between Great Britain and Ireland by means of a submarine cable between Portpatrick in Scotland and Donaghadee in Ireland. The cable core

2352-477: A useful communication system. In 1774, Georges-Louis Le Sage realised an early electric telegraph. The telegraph had a separate wire for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet and its range was only between two rooms of his home. In 1800, Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile , providing a continuous current of electricity for experimentation. This became a source of a low-voltage current that could be used to produce more distinct effects, and which

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2464-653: A while had a monopoly on underwater, and hence, international communication. They also closely cooperated with the London District Telegraph Company who provided a cheap telegram service in London. The Magnetic was amongst the first to employ women as telegraph operators . The English and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company (which was also known as the Magnetic) was established by John Brett in 1850. John Pender also had an interest and Charles Tilston Bright

2576-416: Is hard, durable, and waterproof, making it suitable for underground (and later submarine) cables. This was the cable chosen by the Magnetic for its underground lines. In Ireland too, the Magnetic developed an extensive network of underground cables. In 1851, in anticipation of the submarine cable connection being laid to Donaghadee, the Magnetic laid an underground cable to Dublin . Once the submarine link

2688-401: Is the seizure of private property by a public agency for a purpose deemed to be in the public interest. It may also be used as a penalty for criminal proceedings. Expropriation differs from eminent domain in that the property owner is not compensated for the seized property. Unlike eminent domain, expropriation may also refer to the taking of private property by a private entity authorized by

2800-545: The Midland Great Western Railway . In Ireland, it was the Electric's turn to be forced on to the roads and canals. In 1856, the Magnetic discovered that the insulation of cables laid in dry soil was deteriorating. This was due to the essential oils in the gutta-percha evaporating, leaving just a porous, woody residue. Bright tried to overcome this by reinjecting the oils, but with limited success. This problem

2912-470: The 'Stick Punch'. The transmitter automatically ran the tape through and transmitted the message at the then exceptionally high speed of 70 words per minute. An early successful teleprinter was invented by Frederick G. Creed . In Glasgow he created his first keyboard perforator, which used compressed air to punch the holes. He also created a reperforator (receiving perforator) and a printer. The reperforator punched incoming Morse signals onto paper tape and

3024-408: The 1858 Atlantic cable had been so severe that it was almost unusable: it was destroyed by misguided attempts to solve the problem using high voltage . For the 1866 cable, it was planned to use the Magnetic's opposite polarity pulse method, but doubts were expressed over whether it would work over such a great distance. Magnetic connected together various of their British underground cables to provide

3136-633: The 1960s and 1970s, followed by an increase in privatization in the 80s and 90s, followed again by an increase in nationalization in the 2000s and 2010s. The term appears as "expropriation of expropriators ( ruling classes )" in Marxist theory , and also as the slogan "Loot the looters!" ("грабь награбленное"), which was very popular during the Russian October Revolution . The term is also used to describe nationalization campaigns by communist states , such as dekulakization and collectivization in

3248-528: The British Labour Party . In the United States, potentially nationalizing healthcare is often a topic of political disagreement and makes frequent appearances in debates between political candidates. A 2020 poll shows that a majority (63%) of Americans support a nationalized healthcare system. A re-nationalization occurs when state-owned assets are privatized and later nationalized again, often when

3360-737: The British Electric Telegraph Company). The main competitor of the Magnetic was the Electric Telegraph Company , later, after a merger, the Electric and International Telegraph Company (the Electric for short) founded by William Fothergill Cooke . By the end of the 1850s, the Electric and Magnetic companies were virtually a cartel in Britain. In 1859, the Magnetic moved its headquarters from Liverpool to Threadneedle Street in London, in recognition that they were no longer

3472-509: The District passing on traffic for the Magnetic outside London. The Magnetic founded its own press agency . It promoted its agency by offering lower rates to customers who used it than the rates for customers who wanted connections to rival agencies. In 1870, The Magnetic, along with several other telegraph companies including the Electric, were nationalised under the Telegraph Act 1868 and

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3584-474: The Gutta Percha Company started making gutta-percha insulated electrical cable from 1848 onwards. Gutta-percha is a natural rubber that is thermoplastic , so is good for continuous processes like cable making. Synthetic thermoplastic insulating material was not available until the invention of polyethylene in the 1930s, and it was not used for submarine cables until the 1940s. On cooling, gutta-percha

3696-515: The ITA-1 Baudot code , a five-bit code. This yielded only thirty-two codes, so it was over-defined into two "shifts", "letters" and "figures". An explicit, unshared shift code prefaced each set of letters and figures. In 1901, Baudot's code was modified by Donald Murray . In the 1930s, teleprinters were produced by Teletype in the US, Creed in Britain and Siemens in Germany. By 1935, message routing

3808-571: The Imperial palace at Tsarskoye Selo and Kronstadt Naval Base . In 1833, Carl Friedrich Gauss , together with the physics professor Wilhelm Weber in Göttingen , installed a 1,200-metre-long (3,900 ft) wire above the town's roofs. Gauss combined the Poggendorff-Schweigger multiplicator with his magnetometer to build a more sensitive device, the galvanometer . To change the direction of

3920-538: The Irish Sea, much deeper than the English Channel, dragged the cable into a large bow and there was consequently insufficient length to land it. The attempt was abandoned. For their cable, Magnetic were more careful in testing the insulation of batches of cable than Newall. Coils of cable were hung over the side of the dock and left to soak before testing. They used a new type of battery for insulation testing that

4032-455: The Morse system became the standard for international communication, using a modified form of Morse's code that had been developed for German railways. Electrical telegraphs were used by the emerging railway companies to provide signals for train control systems, minimizing the chances of trains colliding with each other. This was built around the signalling block system in which signal boxes along

4144-519: The Morse system. As well as the rapid expansion of the use of the telegraphs along the railways, they soon spread into the field of mass communication with the instruments being installed in post offices . The era of mass personal communication had begun. Telegraph networks were expensive to build, but financing was readily available, especially from London bankers. By 1852, National systems were in operation in major countries: The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, for example,

4256-559: The USSR . However, nationalization is not a specifically socialist strategy, and Marxism's founders were skeptical of its value. As Engels put it: Therein precisely lies the rub; for, so long as the propertied classes remain at the helm, nationalisation never abolishes exploitation but merely changes its form — in the French, American or Swiss republics no less than in monarchist Central, and despotic Eastern, Europe. Nikolai Bukharin also criticised

4368-578: The alphabet, a message could be transmitted by connecting the wire terminals in turn to an electrostatic machine, and observing the deflection of pith balls at the far end. The writer has never been positively identified, but the letter was signed C.M. and posted from Renfrew leading to a Charles Marshall of Renfrew being suggested. Telegraphs employing electrostatic attraction were the basis of early experiments in electrical telegraphy in Europe, but were abandoned as being impractical and were never developed into

4480-539: The application of electricity to communications at a distance. All the known effects of electricity – such as sparks , electrostatic attraction , chemical changes , electric shocks , and later electromagnetism  – were applied to the problems of detecting controlled transmissions of electricity at various distances. In 1753, an anonymous writer in the Scots Magazine suggested an electrostatic telegraph. Using one wire for each letter of

4592-536: The armature was intended to make marks on paper tape, but operators learned to interpret the clicks and it was more efficient to write down the message directly. In 1851, a conference in Vienna of countries in the German-Austrian Telegraph Union (which included many central European countries) adopted the Morse telegraph as the system for international communications. The international Morse code adopted

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4704-420: The bar, creating a much more powerful electromagnet which could operate a telegraph through the high resistance of long telegraph wires. During his tenure at The Albany Academy from 1826 to 1832, Henry first demonstrated the theory of the 'magnetic telegraph' by ringing a bell through one-mile (1.6 km) of wire strung around the room in 1831. In 1835, Joseph Henry and Edward Davy independently invented

4816-403: The bubbles and could then record the transmitted message. This is in contrast to later telegraphs that used a single wire (with ground return). Hans Christian Ørsted discovered in 1820 that an electric current produces a magnetic field that will deflect a compass needle. In the same year Johann Schweigger invented the galvanometer , with a coil of wire around a compass, that could be used as

4928-685: The chemical and producing readable blue marks in Morse code. The speed of the printing telegraph was 16 and a half words per minute, but messages still required translation into English by live copyists. Chemical telegraphy came to an end in the US in 1851, when the Morse group defeated the Bain patent in the US District Court. For a brief period, starting with the New York–Boston line in 1848, some telegraph networks began to employ sound operators, who were trained to understand Morse code aurally. Gradually,

5040-447: The communicator. Pressing another key would then release the pointer and the previous key, and re-connect the magneto to the line. These machines were very robust and simple to operate, and they stayed in use in Britain until well into the 20th century. The Morse system uses a single wire between offices. At the sending station, an operator taps on a switch called a telegraph key , spelling out text messages in Morse code . Originally,

5152-451: The company wound up . The telegraph system of the Magnetic was somewhat different from other companies. This was largely because the Electric held the patents for the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph . The name of the company refers to the fact that their telegraph system did not require batteries . Power for the transmissions was generated electromagnetically . The system, invented by William Thomas Henley and George Foster in 1848,

5264-462: The copper wire used was very impure, containing less than 50% copper, despite the Gutta Percha Company specifying 85%. The Magnetic's network was centred on northern England, Scotland, and Ireland, with its headquarters in Liverpool . Like most other telegraph companies, it ran its major telegraph trunk lines along railways in its home area. One of their first lines was ten unarmoured wires buried in

5376-579: The east coast by 24 October 1861, bringing an end to the Pony Express . France was slow to adopt the electrical telegraph, because of the extensive optical telegraph system built during the Napoleonic era . There was also serious concern that an electrical telegraph could be quickly put out of action by enemy saboteurs, something that was much more difficult to do with optical telegraphs which had no exposed hardware between stations. The Foy-Breguet telegraph

5488-504: The electric current, he constructed a commutator of his own. As a result, he was able to make the distant needle move in the direction set by the commutator on the other end of the line. At first, Gauss and Weber used the telegraph to coordinate time, but soon they developed other signals and finally, their own alphabet. The alphabet was encoded in a binary code that was transmitted by positive or negative voltage pulses which were generated by means of moving an induction coil up and down over

5600-605: The electric telegraph, visual systems were used, including beacons , smoke signals , flag semaphore , and optical telegraphs for visual signals to communicate over distances of land. An auditory predecessor was West African talking drums . In the 19th century, Yoruba drummers used talking drums to mimic human tonal language to communicate complex messages – usually regarding news of birth, ceremonies, and military conflict – over 4–5 mile distances. From early studies of electricity , electrical phenomena were known to travel with great speed, and many experimenters worked on

5712-498: The first cable to Ireland. This control of international traffic gave them a significant advantage in the domestic market. Another company with a close relationship was the London District Telegraph Company (the District), formed in 1859. The District provided a cheap telegram service within London only. They shared headquarters and directors with the Magnetic. The Magnetic installed their lines and trained their staff in return for

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5824-516: The first means of radiowave telecommunication, which he began in 1894. In the early 20th century, manual operation of telegraph machines was slowly replaced by teleprinter networks. Increasing use of the telephone pushed telegraphy into only a few specialist uses; its use by the general public dwindled to greetings for special occasions. The rise of the Internet and email in the 1990s largely made dedicated telegraphy networks obsolete. Prior to

5936-635: The former owners . Nationalization is distinguished from property redistribution in that the government retains control of nationalized property . Some nationalizations take place when a government seizes property acquired illegally. For example, in 1945 the French government seized the car-maker Renault because its owners had collaborated with the 1940–1944 Nazi occupiers of France . In September 2021, Berliners voted to expropriate over 240,000 housing units , many of which were being held unoccupied as investment property. Economists distinguish between nationalization and socialization , which refers to

6048-574: The intention of being first to get a telegraph connection to Ireland. This Newall cable was only lightly armoured with an open 'bird-cage' structure of the iron wires, there was no cushioning layer between the core and the armour, and the insulation was not properly tested before laying because of the great hurry to get the job done before Magnetic was ready. This cable was laid from Holyhead in Wales to Howth , near Dublin with William Henry Woodhouse as engineer, and thence to Dublin via underground cable along

6160-502: The iron wire armouring with Spanish windlasses . Newall attempted to lay the Sunderland-made cable, again using the chartered steamer Britannia , in the autumn of 1852. The cable was too taut as she sailed from Portpatrick, resulting in the test instruments being dragged into the sea. Several delays caused by broken iron wires as the cable was laid, resulted in the ship drifting off course and running out of cable and this attempt too

6272-453: The line communicate with neighbouring boxes by telegraphic sounding of single-stroke bells and three-position needle telegraph instruments. In the 1840s, the electrical telegraph superseded optical telegraph systems such as semaphores, becoming the standard way to send urgent messages. By the latter half of the century, most developed nations had commercial telegraph networks with local telegraph offices in most cities and towns, allowing

6384-491: The magnetic needles inside a coil of wire connected to each pair of conductors. He successfully demonstrated it, showing the feasibility of the electromagnetic telegraph, but only within a lecture hall. In 1825, William Sturgeon invented the electromagnet , with a single winding of uninsulated wire on a piece of varnished iron , which increased the magnetic force produced by electric current. Joseph Henry improved it in 1828 by placing several windings of insulated wire around

6496-620: The main pulse and slightly delayed from it, the retarded signal was sufficiently cancelled to make the line usable at normal operator speeds. This system was developed theoretically by William Thomson and demonstrated to work by Fleeming Jenkin . The Magnetic played a part in solving the dispersion problem on the transatlantic telegraph cable of the Atlantic Telegraph Company . Magnetic were strongly connected with this project; Bright promoted it and shares were sold largely to Magnetic shareholders , including Pender. Dispersion on

6608-500: The market until the telegraph was nationalised in 1870. The Magnetic's telegraph system differed from other telegraph companies. They favoured underground cables rather than wires suspended on poles . This system was problematic because of the limitations of insulation materials available at the time, but the Magnetic was constrained by the wayleaves owned by other companies on better routes. They were also unique in not using batteries which were required on other systems. Instead

6720-473: The mercury dipping electrical relay , in which a magnetic needle is dipped into a pot of mercury when an electric current passes through the surrounding coil. In 1837, Davy invented the much more practical metallic make-and-break relay which became the relay of choice in telegraph systems and a key component for periodically renewing weak signals. Davy demonstrated his telegraph system in Regent's Park in 1837 and

6832-532: The most widely used of a number of early messaging systems called telegraphs , that were devised to send text messages more quickly than physically carrying them. Electrical telegraphy can be considered the first example of electrical engineering . Text telegraphy consisted of two or more geographically separated stations, called telegraph offices . The offices were connected by wires, usually supported overhead on utility poles . Many electrical telegraph systems were invented that operated in different ways, but

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6944-432: The most widely used of its type was the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph , invented in 1837. The second category are armature systems, in which the current activates a telegraph sounder that makes a click; communication on this type of system relies on sending clicks in coded rhythmic patterns. The archetype of this category was the Morse system and the code associated with it, both invented by Samuel Morse in 1838. In 1865,

7056-732: The motivations of the nationalizing party. Nationalization was employed towards the Panama Canal by the Panamanian Government, which came under the Panama Canal Authority in 1999, to internationally positive effect. Likewise, the Suez Canal was nationalized multiple times throughout history. In Germany, the Federal Press [ Bundesdruckerei ] was nationalized in 2008 with positive revenue and net income since. Expropriation

7168-434: The nationalization of key services such as water, bus, railways and broadband in the United Kingdom could save £13bn every year. Nationalization may produce other effects, such as reducing competition in the marketplace, which in turn reduces incentives to innovation and maintains high prices. In the short run, nationalization can provide a larger revenue stream for government but may cause that industry to falter depending on

7280-403: The needle struck them (an innovation of Cooke and Wheatstone in 1845) to solve this problem. The Magnetic instead used an 1854 invention of Charles Tilston Bright on its more busy lines. This was the acoustic telegraph (not to be confused with the acoustic telegraphy method of multiplexing ) known as Bright's bells. In this system, two bells placed either side of the operator are rung with

7392-422: The number of characters it was required to code. In May 1837 they patented their system. The patent recommended five needles, which coded twenty of the alphabet's 26 letters. Samuel Morse independently developed and patented a recording electric telegraph in 1837. Morse's assistant Alfred Vail developed an instrument that was called the register for recording the received messages. It embossed dots and dashes on

7504-414: The ones that became widespread fit into two broad categories. First are the needle telegraphs, in which electric current sent down the telegraph line produces electromagnetic force to move a needle-shaped pointer into position over a printed list. Early needle telegraph models used multiple needles, thus requiring multiple wires to be installed between stations. The first commercial needle telegraph system and

7616-470: The operator generated the necessary power electromagnetically . The coded message was sent by the operator moving handles which moved coils past a permanent magnet thus generating telegraph pulses . The Magnetic laid the first submarine telegraph cable to Ireland and developed an extensive telegraph network there. They had a close connection with the Submarine Telegraph Company and for

7728-476: The permanent magnet after deflection. The operator was able to apply a current in the reverse direction so that there were two positions that the needle could be held in. The code consisted of various combinations of successive needle deflections to the left or right. In later years, the Magnetic used other telegraph systems. After the takeover of the British Telegraph Company, the Magnetic acquired

7840-415: The pointer reached the position of the depressed key, it would stop and the magneto would be disconnected from the line. The communicator's pointer was geared to the magneto mechanism. The indicator's pointer was moved by a polarised electromagnet whose armature was coupled to it through an escapement . Thus the alternating line voltage moved the indicator's pointer on to the position of the depressed key on

7952-410: The pointers on the dials at both ends set to the start position. The transmitting operator would then press down the key corresponding to the letter to be transmitted. In the base of the communicator was a magneto actuated by a handle on the front. This would be turned to apply an alternating voltage to the line. Each half cycle of the current would advance the pointers at both ends by one position. When

8064-507: The possibilities of rapid global communication in Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph and of some other Electrical Apparatus was the first published work on electric telegraphy and even described the risk of signal retardation due to induction. Elements of Ronalds' design were utilised in the subsequent commercialisation of the telegraph over 20 years later. The Schilling telegraph , invented by Baron Schilling von Canstatt in 1832,

8176-558: The printer decoded this tape to produce alphanumeric characters on plain paper. This was the origin of the Creed High Speed Automatic Printing System, which could run at an unprecedented 200 words per minute. His system was adopted by the Daily Mail for daily transmission of the newspaper contents. With the invention of the teletypewriter , telegraphic encoding became fully automated. Early teletypewriters used

8288-437: The process of restructuring the economic framework, organizational structure, and institutions of an economy on a socialist basis. By contrast, nationalization does not necessarily imply social ownership and the restructuring of the economic system . Historically, states have carried out nationalizations for various different purposes under a wide variety of different political systems and economic systems . Nationalization

8400-497: The public to send messages (called telegrams ) addressed to any person in the country, for a fee. Beginning in 1850, submarine telegraph cables allowed for the first rapid communication between people on different continents. The telegraph's nearly-instant transmission of messages across continents – and between continents – had widespread social and economic impacts. The electric telegraph led to Guglielmo Marconi 's invention of wireless telegraphy ,

8512-626: The railway line. Laying of the submarine cable was completed on 1 June 1852 by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company 's chartered paddle steamer Britannia of 1825, usually used as a cattle ship, and with assistance from the Admiralty with HMS Prospero . However, the cable failed a few days later and was never put into service. In July of the same year, the Electric Telegraph Company of Ireland tried using an insulated cable inside

8624-476: The receiving end. The system was very stable and accurate and became accepted around the world. The next improvement was the Baudot code of 1874. French engineer Émile Baudot patented a printing telegraph in which the signals were translated automatically into typographic characters. Each character was assigned a five-bit code, mechanically interpreted from the state of five on/off switches. Operators had to maintain

8736-450: The return current and one for a signal bell. When at the starting station the operator pressed a key, the corresponding pointer was deflected at the receiving station. Different positions of black and white flags on different disks gave combinations which corresponded to the letters or numbers. Pavel Schilling subsequently improved its apparatus by reducing the number of connecting wires from eight to two. On 21 October 1832, Schilling managed

8848-426: The rights to the needle telegraph instrument of that company's founder, Henry Highton . This instrument was the cheapest of any of the instruments produced at the time, but like all needle telegraphs, was slower than audible systems due to the operator having to continually look up at the instrument while transcribing the message. Some companies moved to needle instruments with endstops making two different sounds when

8960-473: The route London – Birmingham – Manchester – Glasgow – Carlisle . Wires on poles do not need to be electrically insulated (although they may have a protective coating). This is not so with underground lines. These must be insulated from the ground and from each other. The insulation must also be waterproof. Good insulating materials were not available in the early days of telegraphy, but after William Montgomerie sent samples of gutta-percha to Europe in 1843,

9072-469: The same year, instead of a voltaic pile , Gauss used an induction pulse, enabling him to transmit seven letters a minute instead of two. The inventors and university did not have the funds to develop the telegraph on their own, but they received funding from Alexander von Humboldt . Carl August Steinheil in Munich was able to build a telegraph network within the city in 1835–1836. In 1838, Steinheil installed

9184-426: The sending rate. There were many experiments with moving pointers, and various electrical encodings. However, most systems were too complicated and unreliable. A successful expedient to reduce the cost per message was the development of telegraphese . The first system that did not require skilled technicians to operate was Charles Wheatstone's ABC system in 1840 in which the letters of the alphabet were arranged around

9296-463: The space between two railway tracks of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway . The Magnetic developed an extensive underground cable network from 1851 onwards. This was in contrast to other companies who used wires suspended between telegraph poles , or in built up areas, from rooftop to rooftop. Partly, the Magnetic buried cables for better protection from the elements. However, a more pressing reason

9408-420: The speed with which they could send messages, up to the maximum of ten shillings per week when 10 wpm was achieved. It was a popular job with unmarried women who otherwise had few good options. Electrical telegraph Electrical telegraphy is a point-to-point text messaging system, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and

9520-433: The two clicks. The message was then written out in long-hand. Royal Earl House developed and patented a letter-printing telegraph system in 1846 which employed an alphabetic keyboard for the transmitter and automatically printed the letters on paper at the receiver, and followed this up with a steam-powered version in 1852. Advocates of printing telegraphy said it would eliminate Morse operators' errors. The House machine

9632-416: The use of sound operators eliminated the need for telegraph receivers to include register and tape. Instead, the receiving instrument was developed into a "sounder", an electromagnet that was energized by a current and attracted a small iron lever. When the sounding key was opened or closed, the sounder lever struck an anvil. The Morse operator distinguished a dot and a dash by the short or long interval between

9744-611: Was gutta-percha insulated copper wire made by the Gutta Percha Company . This was armoured with iron wires by R. S. Newall and Company at their works in Sunderland . Before this could be achieved, two other companies attempted to be the first to make the connection across the Irish Sea . Despite having the contract to lay the Magnetic company's cable, Newall also secretly constructed another cable at their Gateshead works with

9856-442: Was a needle telegraph and came in double-needle or single-needle versions. The machine was worked by the operator pushing pedal keys. An armature connected to the key moved two coils through the magnetic field of a permanent magnet . This generated a pulse of current which caused a deflection of the corresponding needle at both ends of the line. The needles were magnetised and so arranged that they were held in position by

9968-410: Was a five-needle, six-wire system, and had the major advantage of displaying the letter being sent so operators did not need to learn a code. The insulation failed on the underground cables between Paddington and West Drayton, and when the line was extended to Slough in 1843, the system was converted to a one-needle, two-wire configuration with uninsulated wires on poles. The cost of installing wires

10080-440: Was abandoned. Magnetic were successful with a new cable in 1853 over the same route, with Newall this time using the chartered Newcastle collier William Hutt . This was a six-core cable and heavier than the 1852 cable, weighing seven tons per mile. At over 180 fathoms (330 m) down, it was the deepest cable laid to that date. Repairs to the cable in 1861 required 128 splices. Tests on pieces of retrieved cable found that

10192-415: Was an early needle telegraph . It had a transmitting device that consisted of a keyboard with 16 black-and-white keys. These served for switching the electric current. The receiving instrument consisted of six galvanometers with magnetic needles, suspended from silk threads . The two stations of Schilling's telegraph were connected by eight wires; six were connected with the galvanometers, one served for

10304-435: Was approved for a telegraph between the imperial palace at Peterhof and the naval base at Kronstadt . However, the project was cancelled following Schilling's death in 1837. Schilling was also one of the first to put into practice the idea of the binary system of signal transmission. His work was taken over and developed by Moritz von Jacobi who invented telegraph equipment that was used by Tsar Alexander III to connect

10416-439: Was called retardation because different parts of a telegraph pulse travels at different speeds on the cable. Part of the pulse appears to be 'retarded', arriving later than the rest at the destination. This 'smearing out' of the pulse interferes with neighbouring pulses making the transmission unintelligible unless messages are sent at a much slower speed. The Magnetic found that if they generated pulses of opposite polarity to

10528-409: Was capable of being used at sea. Previously, the test batteries had been lined wooden cases with liquid electrolyte ( Daniell cells ). The new 'sand battery' comprised a moulded gutta-percha case filled with sand saturated with electrolyte, making it virtually unspillable. 144 cells were used in series (around 150 V ). Several suspect portions of insulation were removed and repaired, by opening up

10640-520: Was considerably modified from the original American Morse code , and was based on a code used on Hamburg railways ( Gerke , 1848). A common code was a necessary step to allow direct telegraph connection between countries. With different codes, additional operators were required to translate and retransmit the message. In 1865, a conference in Paris adopted Gerke's code as the International Morse code and

10752-634: Was created in 1852 in Rochester, New York and eventually became the Western Union Telegraph Company . Although many countries had telegraph networks, there was no worldwide interconnection. Message by post was still the primary means of communication to countries outside Europe. Telegraphy was introduced in Central Asia during the 1870s. A continuing goal in telegraphy was to reduce the cost per message by reducing hand-work, or increasing

10864-513: Was eventually adopted. This was a two-needle system using two signal wires but displayed in a uniquely different way to other needle telegraphs. The needles made symbols similar to the Chappe optical system symbols, making it more familiar to the telegraph operators. The optical system was decommissioned starting in 1846, but not completely until 1855. In that year the Foy-Breguet system was replaced with

10976-665: Was far less limited than the momentary discharge of an electrostatic machine , which with Leyden jars were the only previously known human-made sources of electricity. Another very early experiment in electrical telegraphy was an "electrochemical telegraph" created by the German physician , anatomist and inventor Samuel Thomas von Sömmering in 1809, based on an earlier 1804 design by Spanish polymath and scientist Francisco Salva Campillo . Both their designs employed multiple wires (up to 35) to represent almost all Latin letters and numerals. Thus, messages could be conveyed electrically up to

11088-479: Was granted a patent on 4 July 1838. Davy also invented a printing telegraph which used the electric current from the telegraph signal to mark a ribbon of calico infused with potassium iodide and calcium hypochlorite . The first working telegraph was built by the English inventor Francis Ronalds in 1816 and used static electricity. At the family home on Hammersmith Mall , he set up a complete subterranean system in

11200-453: Was henceforth the international standard. The US, however, continued to use American Morse code internally for some time, hence international messages required retransmission in both directions. In the United States, the Morse/Vail telegraph was quickly deployed in the two decades following the first demonstration in 1844. The overland telegraph connected the west coast of the continent to

11312-427: Was implemented in Germany during the 1930s as a network used to communicate within the government. At the rate of 45.45 (±0.5%) baud – considered speedy at the time – up to 25 telex channels could share a single long-distance telephone channel by using voice frequency telegraphy multiplexing , making telex the least expensive method of reliable long-distance communication. Automatic teleprinter exchange service

11424-453: Was in place, Dublin could be connected to London via Manchester and Liverpool. In the west of Ireland, by 1855 they had laid cables that stretched down the entire length of the island on the route Portrush – Sligo – Galway – Limerick – Tralee – Cape Clear . The relationship of the Magnetic with Irish railway companies was the exact opposite of that in Britain. The Magnetic obtained exclusive agreements with many railways, including in 1858 with

11536-526: Was installed on the Euston to Camden Town section of Robert Stephenson 's London and Birmingham Railway in 1837 for signalling rope-hauling of locomotives. It was rejected in favour of pneumatic whistles. Cooke and Wheatstone had their first commercial success with a system installed on the Great Western Railway over the 13 miles (21 km) from Paddington station to West Drayton in 1838. This

11648-643: Was introduced into Canada by CPR Telegraphs and CN Telegraph in July 1957 and in 1958, Western Union started to build a Telex network in the United States. Nationalization Nationalization ( nationalisation in British English ) is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state . Nationalization contrasts with privatization and with demutualization . When previously nationalized assets are privatized and subsequently returned to public ownership at

11760-452: Was one of the founders of this company and the Magnetic's shareholders were inclined to invest because they expected that the transatlantic traffic would mean more business for the Magnetic's Irish lines. This was because the landing point for the cable was in Ireland and traffic would therefore have to pass through the Magnetic's lines. The Magnetic was an early advocate of employing women as telegraph operators . They were paid according to

11872-436: Was one of the major mechanisms advocated by reformist socialists and social democrats for gradually transitioning to socialism. In this context, the goals of nationalization were to dispossess large capitalists, redirect the profits of industry to the public purse, and establish some form of workers' self-management as a precursor to the establishment of a socialist economic system. Although sometimes undertaken as part of

11984-517: Was that many railway companies had exclusive agreements with the Electric, which shut out the Magnetic. Further, the British Telegraph Company, had exclusive rights for overhead lines on public roads, and the United Kingdom Telegraph Company had exclusive rights along canals. The Magnetic had a particular problem in reaching London. Their solution was to run buried cables along major roads. Ten wires were installed in this way along

12096-442: Was the chief engineer. The company's initial objective was to connect Britain with Ireland following the success of the Submarine Telegraph Company in connecting England with France with the first ocean cable to be put in service. The British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed in 1857 in Liverpool through a merger of the English and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company and the British Telegraph Company (originally known as

12208-469: Was the last great barrier to full automation. Large telegraphy providers began to develop systems that used telephone-like rotary dialling to connect teletypewriters. These resulting systems were called "Telex" (TELegraph EXchange). Telex machines first performed rotary-telephone-style pulse dialling for circuit switching , and then sent data by ITA2 . This "type A" Telex routing functionally automated message routing. The first wide-coverage Telex network

12320-486: Was the main driver for acquiring the unprofitable British Telegraph Company—so that the Magnetic inherited their overhead cable rights. From this point, the Magnetic avoided laying new underground cables except where it was essential to do so. Brett started the fundraising for the Atlantic Telegraph Company 's project to build the transatlantic telegraph cable at the Magnetic's Liverpool headquarters in November 1856. Brett

12432-426: Was ultimately more economically significant than the cost of training operators. The one-needle telegraph proved highly successful on British railways, and 15,000 sets were in use at the end of the nineteenth century; some remained in service in the 1930s. The Electric Telegraph Company , the world's first public telegraphy company, was formed in 1845 by financier John Lewis Ricardo and Cooke. Wheatstone developed

12544-524: Was used on four main American telegraph lines by 1852. The speed of the House machine was announced as 2600 words an hour. David Edward Hughes invented the printing telegraph in 1855; it used a keyboard of 26 keys for the alphabet and a spinning type wheel that determined the letter being transmitted by the length of time that had elapsed since the previous transmission. The system allowed for automatic recording on

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