ABSTRACT

Up to the 1820s, with the exception of the strategic semaphores operated by various Western European Governments, the swiftest and most reliable means of communication continued to be the post-horse, as it had been since the days of the Persian Empire. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century two new and quicker techniques of carrying messages came into general use—the railway locomotive and the electric telegraph. Between 1838 and 1843 the Great Western Railway board installed the electric telegraph from Paddington to Slough, and soon afterwards the new method of transmitting intelligence received considerable publicity. It was not long before attempts were being made to lay underwater electric telegraph wires or 'cables' by making use of the insulating properties of gutta percha, a product of the Malayan forests brought to wide public notice by William Montgomerie in 1843. The next development in point of time took place in the transmission of sound without wires.