National Interests at Stake
The telegraph arose at a time of urgent need for rapid, reliable long-distance communication. Bankers and businessmen transacted commerce over great distances. Nations and empires waged wide-ranging wars of imperial rivalry and colonial conquest. In the early decades of the 19th century, breakthroughs in understanding how electricity works inspired inventors in Europe and America to produce electrical message signaling devices, but the first device called a telegraph relied on optical signaling.