page_title: Electrical telegraph
section_title: Cable and Wireless Company
hierarchical_section_title: Electrical telegraph / Commercial telegraphy / Cable and Wireless Company
caption_attribution_description: English: The Eastern Telegraph Co.: System and its general connections. Chart of submarine telegraph cable routes, showing the global reach of telecommunications at the beginning of the 20th century
context_page_description: An electrical telegraph was a point-to-point text messaging system, used from the 1840s until better systems became widespread. It used coded pulses of electric current through dedicated wires to transmit information over long distances. It was the first electrical telecommunications system, the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems called telegraphs, devised to send text messages more rapidly than written messages could be sent. This system allowed for communication to occur without the necessity of physical transportation. Prior to this, beacons, smoke signal, flag semaphore, and optical telegraphs used visual signals to communicate over distances of land.
  An electrical telegraph consisted of two or more geographically separated stations connected by wires, usually supported overhead on utility poles. There were many different electrical telegraph systems invented, but the ones that became widespread fit into two broad categories. The first category consists of needle telegraphs in which a needle pointer is made to move electromagnetically with a pulse of electric current from a battery or dynamo down the telegraph line.
context_section_description: Cable & Wireless was a British telecommunications company that traced its origins back to the 1860s, with Sir John Pender as the founder, although the name was only adopted in 1934. It was formed from successive mergers including: 
  The Falmouth, Malta, Gibraltar Telegraph Company
  The British Indian Submarine Telegraph Company
  The Marseilles, Algiers and Malta Telegraph Company
  The Eastern Telegraph Company
  The Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company
  The Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies
caption: The Eastern Telegraph Company network in 1901
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