Read Next
White House Telegraph Room, 1898
E.C. Heasley, Jules A. Rodier, and Major Montgomery working in the White House's Telegraph Room—which was set up to receive news of the Spanish-American War—in Washington, D.C., 1898.
telegraph
Also known as: telegraphy
telegraph, any device or system that allows the transmission of information by coded signal over distance. Many telegraphic systems have been used over the centuries, but the term is most often understood to refer to the electric telegraph, which was developed in the mid-19th century and for more than 100 years was the principal means of transmitting printed information by wire or radio wave. The word telegraph is derived from the Greek words tele, meaning “distant,” and graphein, meaning “to write.” It came into use toward the end of the 18th century to describe an optical semaphore system developed in ...(100 of 2615 words)