©Mark
Ollig
Abraham Lincoln was the first US president who
used a communication technology similar to today’s email.
During
the Civil War, Lincoln transmitted and received secretly-coded messages using
telegraphy.
One
book author referenced Lincoln’s use of telegraphy as Telegraph Mail or T-Mail.
Today,
we email and text using smartphones and computers over broadband connections;
Lincoln communicated using a mechanical telegraph switching key mounted to a
wooden block connected to battery-electrified telegraph wires.
We
are using the internet; 156 years ago, President Lincoln used the telegraph
network.
Lincoln’s
first experience with the telegraph was in 1857, while he was at the Tazewell
House in Pekin, IL.
There,
he watched a young telegraph operator, Charles Tinker, send and receive
telegraph messages using the Morse keying device.
Lincoln
became very interested and asked Tinker to explain how the telegraph worked.
Abraham
Lincoln was elected president of the United States in 1860.
In
1861, the US War Department’s telegraph office was named Office US Military
Telegraph. It was also known as the wire room.
During
the Civil War, President Lincoln spent much of his time there.
The
wire room is where he received telegram status reports, sent messages,
correspondences, and telegraphed encouragement to his generals and commanders
in the field.
“Mr.
Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph
to Win the Civil War,” is a book written by former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.
The
book reveals Lincoln personally sent more than 1,000 “lightning messages,” or
telegrams, during the time of the Civil War.
Wheeler
explains how Lincoln, wanting to be able to send rapid responses to his generals
out in the field, would spend most nights in the war department’s telegraph
office.
Lincoln
used the telegraph to supplement his preferred forms of communication;
face-to-face meetings, and handwritten letters.
The
telegraph gave the Union states an advantage; communications transmitted over
telegraph wires were received much faster, compared to any other transport
available at the time.
President’s
Lincoln’s messages, converted into electrically transmitted dots and dashes,
sped over the telegraph wires to their destinations much quicker than the
fastest horse rider could deliver official papers.
Lincoln
communicated with the generals on the battlefield in nearly real-time via
“mobile telegraph stations.”
Telegraphy
was the modern communications technology of the period; Lincoln embraced and
capitalized upon it.
His
use of the telegraph directly from the White House helped push its development
and growth westward across the country.
I
learned President Abraham Lincoln was no stranger to engineering and
technology.
He
received a US patent for his invention to lift boats over shallow waters using
an expandable floating chamber device under air pressure.
Lincoln’s
patent is titled, “Buoying Vessels Over Shoals.”
He
filed his invention idea March 10, 1849, shortly after his 40th birthday, and
was granted US Patent No. 6,469 May 22.
Abraham
Lincoln is the only US president to hold a patent.
It
was back in 1838, when a battery-operated, electromagnet telegraph device was
successfully demonstrated by Samuel F.B. Morse.
Following
the demonstration, funds were approved for the construction of a telegraph pole
line between Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD.
May
24, 1844, Morse, before members of Congress, keyed this telegraph message,
“What hath God wrought?” from the US Capitol in Washington. His communication
was received nearly 40 miles away at the B&O Railroad station in Baltimore.
An
1853 map detailing the geographic routes of telegraph lines and station depot locations
along the eastern United States, is viewable on The Library of Congress’s
website: https://bit.ly/2jl1sgI.
By
October 1861, the west and east coast telegraph networks of the US became
connected with each other.
Tom
Wheeler talks about President Lincoln’s use of the telegraph on this C-Span.org
video link: https://cs.pn/2rdOaG5.
An
Aug. 14, 1864, telegraph message President Lincoln sent to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S.
Grant is viewable here: https://bit.ly/2jozd0B.
Other
telegraph messages sent and received by President Lincoln are stored and
viewable on the National Archives website: https://bit.ly/2rcnSVo.
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Telegram from Abraham Lincoln to Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant(Aug. 14, 1864)
1853 map detailing the geographic routes of
telegraph lines and station depot locations along the eastern United States.
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