Sunday, August 7, 2022

How The World's Governments Helped Advance the 19th Century's Internet

They thought there was nothing to the idea and didn't try to help it along.  They pretty much left it alone.

“It,” the 19th century's version of the internet, was the telegraph.  Not telegraph by radio, but by long wires stretched across countries and then farther.  Arguably, the telegraph was one of the most important innovations of the 1800s.  Unarguably, the telegraph revolutionized communications.  In an interesting historical article from the Foundation for Economic Education, Lawrence W. Reed provides several interesting notes about the period.

As Tom Standage explained in his splendid book, The Victorian Internet, messages before the telegraph traveled at the speed of horses. From London to New York, a message required weeks of travel by ship. But after the transatlantic cable debuted mid-century, a telegraphed message from London showed up in New York in a matter of minutes. The world over, this was greeted as nothing short of miraculous. 

Given the very obvious advantages of the telegraph it's remarkable how short-sighted the entrenched interests were.  

The first electric telegraph was demonstrated in 1816 by Sir Francis Ronalds of the UK, who then brought his invention to the attention of the British Admiralty.  Francis Ronalds (not knighted until much later in his life) was 28 years old at the time.  The year before, 1815, Ronalds had developed the first electric clock.

[H]e had good reason to expect a positive reception. Quite possibly the world’s first electrical engineer, he had already accomplished the impossible by transmitting a signal across eight miles of wire. It was the world’s first working electric telegraph.

On August 5, 1816, Sir John Barrow delivered the British Admiralty’s stunning verdict. Ronalds’ invention was “wholly unnecessary,” he said. His Majesty’s military would continue to communicate via semaphore (signal flags and the like), as it had for centuries.

In spite of the Admiralty’s judgment, Francis Ronalds saw the value in his invention and worked at developing it.  He became a wealthy man and one of the world’s most respected scientists.  Known even in his lifetime as the “father of electric telegraphy,” he made immense contributions to civil and mechanical engineering, meteorology, and early camera technology.

Of course, I can't just pick on the British Admiralty for being short-sighted and making a stupid decision.  The US government doesn't play second to anyone on Earth at making stupid decisions. 

In America, the first telegraph line was run by the federal government, from 1844 to 1846. As historian Burton Folsom explained,

Cave Johnson, the Postmaster General, argued that the use of the telegraph “so powerful for good or evil, cannot with safety be left in the hands of private individuals uncontrolled.” Only the government, Johnson concluded, could be trusted to operate the telegraph in “the public interest.”

Johnson’s assessment proved dead wrong. After two years, Congress tired of the losses and privatized the line. Entrepreneurs figured out how to make it profitable and quickly turned the telegraph into a national, then international enterprise.

Of course, governments making stupid decisions because they think they know better didn't stop in the 1800s.  It should go without saying that just because someone trying to predict the future is from the private sector doesn't guarantee they won't do something stupid.  They'll just throw away their own money.  Reed lists several examples of more recent government stupidities, just to reinforce his point that the best thing they did for the telegraph was leave it alone; to leave it to the private sector. 

An 1800s-style telegraph key, a style called a straight key today (although no one uses one by tapping it with one finger like that).  Image by iStock, from the FEE article.  



14 comments:

  1. Yeah, Big Government sucks at "Hero" level jobs. Spark the interest, like how many things come out of DARPA grants, but let the civilians do their jobs, and step back. Don't tax, don't deny, don't interrupt, don't regulate, except to the minimal amount.

    Same with any business. Power, vehicles, internet, computers, phones, widgets, thingamabobs, all. Yes, Government can buy and set the standards (and by doing that screw everything up.) Or go COTS. Lots and lots of COTS.

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  2. The government overreaches too often. They tried a similar thing with Amateur Radio at the end of WW I. The Department of the Navy wanted to control radio as it was then and didn't want amateurs for "National Security" reasons.

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    1. I think Herbert Hoover had a hand in getting Hams back on the air after WWI.

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  3. If the government had been responsible for the Internet, it would be a single page of Al Gore's 2000 election website and usenet.

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  4. How about trying to ban sliced bread after it was first developed?

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  5. You should be ashamed of yourself for lying like that. Everyone knows that Ahmed Mohammed invented the electric clock!

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  6. Did Ham radio for a few years, 60 years ago, but only JUST managed the keying-speed test.

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    1. Those tests are long gone, but since I'm at 46 years licensed I took them all in front of an FCC examiner. Which is gone, too. There's a quarter century club (QCWA) but not a half century version that I know of.

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    2. Yup. Had to get my Ham back in '66 as a kid, one year later had to get a Class C for Radio Control airplanes!! K74811 and KAY2244. Thems were the days... I stuttered a LOT on the key...

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    3. I had to go to Chicago to the FCC Field Office way back in 1964 to take my General. I was so nervous the first time that I failed the 13WPM codes test even though I could copy 20WPM from W1AW. I could have taken the written test to pass my Technician class, but my Dad's Ham friends had told him NO. Get my General, or get out of the game, because if I had a Tech license at the time I would have gotten bored and dropped out. So my Mom grabbed me by the collar and dragged me home. I passed it the next time 30 days later when I was 10% copy at 25WPM from W1AW, and I've been a Ham since then.

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  7. (although no one uses one by tapping it with one finger like that) My immediate reaction upon seeing the pic! Thank you for pointing it out. Dunno why it seemed important, but still... And The Victorian Internet is on hold at my local library. I'm #1 in line. I have a straight key and a bug both in storage. Somewhere...

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  8. There is an OOTC, the Old Old Timers Club, for those hams licensed for 50 years, or more. I passed 50 years continuously licensed in Nov. 2021. Hard to believe it has been this long.

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  9. A side note:
    Matthew Fontaine Maury conducted bathymetric surveys for the first successful route for cable connecting America with Europe. That route is in use to today. He also invented a means for repairing undersea cables.

    Too, it was Maury who originated the idea by which maritime seasonal weather patterns and oceanic currents were discovered. The resultant pilot charts are still used by mariners throughout the world.

    Maury is a hero of mine. His biography is well worth the reading.

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    1. Thanks for that note. I don't know the name at all, and when I was copying the stuff for this post, I was pretty amazed at an undersea cable being installed that far back. I thought they were a product of the early 20th century.

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