JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

There were some ways of getting around the problem of geography and communications over long distance–visual semaphores, smoke, drums, that sort. The issue of long-distance relatively instant communication wasn’t solved until the appearance of the telegraph, which for the most part outside of starts and fits and a complicated pre-history really wasn’t solved until Morse and Vail in about 1843. The first line was laid in the U.S. between D.C. and Baltimore in the next year, and then with the display of this success a network of electric communications exploded, as you can see in the map below showing telegraph lines in the U.S. in 1848, just five years after there was nothing at all. 

Anyway this is what came to mind when I stumbled on the following short notice that appeared in the Journal of the Franklin Institute in December 1847–the fixing of a “constant” time communicated by electric telegraph, reporting the standard time from Greenwich, to be sent out to the furthest reaches of the telegraphic world, and which was an early attempt at the mass distribution of regulated synchronous time keeping over long distances. Pretty cool idea.  

• “It is now the daily practice at Greenwich, at 1 P.M., to indicate the true time by dropping a ball from the upper part of the Observatory, which, being telegraphed to the Admiralty, and signaled to the shipping on the Thames, enables ships chronometers to be adjusted.”

A map of the telegraph lines in Great Britain in 1852:

Source: distancewriting.co.uk 

And the map of telegraph lines in the U.S.:

Source: wikicommons on “telegraph history”