Static electricity was experimented with from ancient times

• Benjamin Franklin was a key contributor to an understanding of electricity, though he guessed wrong about the direction of flow
• Machines were built to generate static electricity
• several workable telegraphs were built before 1800, using electrostaticly generated electricity, most notably by William Watson

 Machine for generating static electricity

• Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile in 1800.  The idea came from Luigi Galvani, an anatomist, who was trying to understand why electricity caused frogs legs to twitch.  Galvani thought it resulted from electrical action in the vicinity, such as lightening, stimulating some kind of natural electricity.  Volta realized that the metal elements touching the frog's nerves might be the source of the action.  Over a period of several years Volta worked out how to use this effect and produced the first continuous flow of current, from a wet battery.
• Volta's discovery led quickly to the use of electric current to decompose water and to electroplating of metals.  In 1810 Davy created an electric arc between two terminals as a source of light, but the cost was totally impractical using batteries.
• Continuous electric current from a battery made a better telegraph than short bursts of current from an electrostatic machine.  A number of people tried to build telegraphs--using electric current to ring bells, for example,  but the cost was still too high.

 Pixii's generator

• in 1820 Oersted discovered that an electric current creates a magnetic field, and Ampere and Faraday started researching the interactions between the two.  Faraday used this to make a disk rotate in 1831--the first generator but not a useful one.
• Hippolyte Pixii invented the first effective generator in 1832, but it was marginal
• Joseph Henry showed the practical possiblities of electromagnets to produce a useable signal from a weak current in 1830
• In 1845 Charles Wheatstone introduced the use of electromagnets instead of permanent magnets in a generator, which was a major improvement.

 Cooke and Wheatstone Telegraph

• Practical telegraphs were invented by Schilling and Jacobi and Russia and by Cooke and Wheatstone in England--a five-needle system was tried in 1837 for railway use and later simplified--railway signaling is very important but not very demanding.  The five needle system used moving needles to point to letters on a board--the operator didn't have to read code but you had to have six wires between the two stations.

 Samuel Morse

• Samuel Morse wanted to be a painter and like Fulton went to England to study with Benjamin West.  He was successful as an artist but still found he didn't make much money
• He may have been attracted to the idea of the telegraph because his wife died when he was in Europe and he didn't get the news for two weeks
• he apparently had the idea of Morse code and a one-wire telegraph in 1832, but he was not a skilled engineer and didn't understand key scientific problems
• Morse took a key different approach from most earlier systems, using a code of dots and dashes instead of a machine that could point to individual letters.
• in 1843 Morse got government funding to build a trial line from Baltimore to Washington DC and successfully operated it starting in May 1844

 Morse's first Telegraph message, May 1844

• Morse was good at solving the problems to put the whole system together into something practical.  He hoped to sell his system to the government but when the government refused he and his associates started their own company

• the railroads agreed to the building of telegraph lines along their tracks if they could use them for signaling
• the telegraph then caught on for news and business messages
• the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed in 1861 by the Western Union company, founded in 1856
• the first transatlantic telegraph line was laid in 1856

• colonial times: traditional technology, local ingenuity
• industrial revolution comes to America (1790-1840): emphasis on new industries to be independent from England and Europe, Inventive spirit to meet American needs and challenges of environment, business are growing (particularly factories) but still locally organized.
• expansion of markets and technology (1840-1890): railroad boom expands markets, more and larger factories built, excitement about new technological possibilities (electricity) some based on science, development of engineering schools (mostly late in period), rapid growth of cities

• artist
• outsider able to think of a completely different approach
• putting together all the pieces of the system

Technology traditionally was not based on specialized scientific knowledge

• that changes in the period from 1830-1910