The Telegraph That Changed the World

Lexile: 1010 | Grade: 8

Passage

Before the telegraph, messages could only travel as fast as the person carrying them. News took days—or even weeks—to cross countries. Important events were delayed, decisions slowed, and communication across great distances was uncertain. All of that began to change in the 1840s, when a simple invention rewired the way humans shared information.

The telegraph, created by Samuel Morse and other inventors, allowed people to send messages through electrical wires. Dots and dashes, known as Morse code, represented letters and words. These could be sent almost instantly across long distances using electric signals. For the first time in history, people in different cities—or even on different continents—could communicate in near real-time.

One of the first major uses of the telegraph came during the Mexican-American War in the 1840s. Messages from the battlefield were sent directly to Washington, D.C., allowing government leaders to respond quickly. Later, the telegraph became critical for railroads, helping trains avoid collisions by coordinating their schedules.

But the telegraph did more than speed up information—it changed how people thought about time and distance. A message that once took ten days to arrive could now arrive in seconds. This led to new expectations: faster decisions, quicker reactions, and a growing sense that the world was suddenly smaller.

Some historians argue that the telegraph was the first step toward the global internet. It created a new kind of connectedness—one that didn’t rely on roads, ships, or messengers. In that way, it didn’t just send messages. It reshaped the meaning of connection itself.