The Story of the Telegraph in Jamaica

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The Story of the Telegraph in Jamaica discusses the scientific principles governing telegraphy. And so the reader is taken through the Morse code, the Telex machine, Intelsat, various technical improvements such as those of Frederick Creed, including the Creed High Speed Automatic Printing Telegraphy System (from which the Telex machine emerged). The nineteenth century was remarkable for the growth of new technologies which were destined to have, in some cases, a revolutionary impact on the quantity of social and economic life. This book concentrates on one of the inventions telegraphy which was significant for local and international communication. The telegraphy and the cable, airmail and surface mail gave the post office a central role in the life of the villages scattered over the Jamaican countryside. The history of the telegraph is in part the history of the post office in Jamaica. The telegraph was an essential instrument. Indeed, not until 2004 was the news of the death of the telegraph announced by Cable and Wireless. Up to then it had served with an economy of words and in its distinct peach coloured envelope as the bearer of good news and bad. The people of Jamaica took to the telegram all the more so because telegraph assisted the illiterate or barely literate to compose their thoughts and record then in the format required. On the international front, Jamaica was first lined to the international telegraphic system by submarine cable through Cuba. The book outlines how the system spread into the rest of the Caribbean and to Latin America. Indeed, the books preface not only points to the potential loss to the historical record if the story of the telegraph was not written, but to the demand for this kind of data from students of social history and the history of science and technology.