Business Demand and the Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844–1860

“The telegraph system in America is eminently characteristic of the national mind. At its very birth, it became the handmaiden of commerce.” So wrote the editor of a telegraph trade journal in 1853. Professor Du Boff describes an antebellum American business community that was as ready for a “revolution” in its size and structure as the dawning science of electricity was ready to make it happen. The result was the telegraph and its enthusiastic adoption in a few short years by a business system that quickly became national in scope and outlook. The railroad may ultimately have changed America even more than the telegraph but, as Du Boff shows, the railroad was originally conceived as a local and regional facility whereas the telegraph was interregional in its impact from its very beginnings.