All of the marvelous contrivances which, fill the arena of our civilization, making it first vital and then vocal, have come by the evolutionary process.  Every one of them has a history which is more and more obscure as we follow it backward to its source.  In every case, however, there comes a time when a given discovery, manifesting itself in a given invention, takes a sort of spectacular character, and it is then rather suddenly revealed to the consciousness of mankind.

Of this general law the telegraph affords a conspicuous example.  The whole world knows the story of the telegraph of Morse.  It was in 1844 that the work of this great inventor was publicly demonstrated to the world.  Then it was that the electro-magnetic telegraph in its first rude estate began to be used in the transmission of messages and other written information.

It has come to pass that “telegraph” means virtually electric telegraph.  The people of to-day seem to have forgotten that the telegraph is not necessarily dependent on the electrical current.  They have forgotten that back of the Morse invention other means had been employed of transmitting information at a distance.  They have forgotten that it was by the most gradual and tedious process that the old telegraphic methods were evolved into the new.  Note with wonder how this great invention began, and through what stages it passed to completion.

There is a natural telegraphy.  Whoever stands in an open place and calls aloud to his fellow mortal at a distance telegraphs to him.  At least he telephones to him; that is, sounds to him at a distance.  The air is the medium, the vocal cords in vibration the source of the utterance, and the ear of the one at a distance the audiphonic receiver.  This sort of telegraphy is original and natural with human beings, and it is common to them and the lower animals.  All the creatures that have vocality use this method.  It were hard to say how humble is the creeping thing that does not rasp out some kind of a message to its fellow insect.  Some, like the fireflies, do their telegraphing with a lantern which they carry.  The very crickets are expert in telegraphy, or telephony, which is ultimately the same thing.

After transmitted sound the next thing is the visible signal, and this has been employed by human beings from the earliest ages in transmitting information to a distance.  It is a method which will perhaps never be wholly abandoned.  Observe the surveyors running a trial line.  Far off is the chain bearer and here is the theodolite.  The man with the standard watches for the signal of the man with the instrument.  The language is seen and the message understood, though no word is spoken.  Here the sunlight is the wire, and the visible motion of the hands and arms the letters and words of the message.