TELEGRAPH WIRE TAPS IN THE CIVIL WAR

The U.S. Civil War is known as the first in which military commanders were able to receive real-time information while engaged in battle and maneuvers, thanks to the rapid development of Morse telegraphy after 1844.  What is not so well known is the role of Morse telegraphy in intelligence-gathering and deception on both sides of that conflict.  General John H. Morgan, of the famous Morgan Raiders, was one of the first to actively employ telegraphy as an integral part of military operations..     Morgan had heard of a Canadian telegraph operator, George "Lightning" Ellsworth, who was working in the South when the war broke out, and enlisted him in his Raiders.  There are different versions of how Ellsworth received his nickname.  One has it being derived from his "lightning" speed in sending and receiving Morse code.  The other holds that it was given to him after he was observed operating his telegraph instruments, seated on a railroad crosstie, during a furious thunderstorm.  In either version, Ellsworth is also credited with being able to listen to another telegraph operator for just a few minutes and then mimicking that other operator's "fist" to a perfection.  (Every telegrapher sends with a distinct style, known as his fist, which other telegraphers can recognize as easily as they might recognize a familiar voice.)  In any event, General Morgan took full advantage of "Lightning's" abilities.     One of Ellsworth's more common activities was to tap into a telegraph wire used by Union forces and copy all of the military dispatches transmitted on that line.  For those viewers not familiar with Morse telegraphy, an explanation might be in order.  A telegraph line is similar to an old-fashioned telephone party line where anybody can pick up a receiver and listen to what is being said.  Similarly, on a telegraph line, every dot or dash is heard on every telegraph instrument connected to that line.  Thus, by tapping the line, Ellsworth's instruments became a part of the line and he could hear everything that was transmitted.  See the photos in the Album section of this web site to see a modern reconstruction of possible wire-tapping equipment.     Morgan delighted in taking chances and in taunting his opponents.  On one occasion he sent a telegram to Union General Jeremiah Boyle, who was in command at Louisville, Kentucky:           "Good Morning Jerry.  This telegraph is a great institution.  You should destroy it          as it keeps me posted too well.  My friend Ellsworth has all your dispatches since          July 10 on file.  Do  you want copies?" Many have thought that he would have been better served if he had kept his interceptions secret, but he enjoyed living life on the edge.     On another occasion, also in Kentucky, Ellsworth forced a captured Union telegrapher to send so that he could mimic his sending, then sent a fake dispatch to Union General William Thomas Ward in Lexington.  Accepting the fake dispatch as genuine, General Ward then ordered his forces away from the town of Midway, where Morgan's troops were located, and moved them to Frankfort, where the false dispatch said that Morgan was headed.     Eventually, Union officers learned that they had to encrypt their dispatches so that they could not be fooled by Morgan and "Lightning."     Two books, Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan, by James A. Ramage and The Civil War In Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State, by Kent Masterson Brown, both contain many more stories of Morgan's Raiders and George Ellsworth's part in their raids.  See also the entry for George "Lightning" Elsworth at www.Wikipedia.com for more details of Ellsworth's life.

FLORIDA AND THE INTERNATIONAL OCEAN TELEGRAPH COMPANY

Prior to the American Civil War, Horatio J. Perry, an American, had developed close ties with the British and Spanish governments and recognized that profits could be made by linking both countries to their holdings in the Caribbean by telegraph. This would reduce the length of time to communicate with those distant areas from three weeks to one or two days. The trans-Atlantic cable from Ireland to Newfoundland, laid in 1861, had begun the rapid spread of international telegraph service to the western hemisphere. However, at that time, to run cables directly between either Britain or Spain to their holdings in the Caribbean or South America was very risky, due to the vast distance and difficulties encountered in operating long undersea telegraph cables. Perry put together a scheme to use the existing European and trans-Atlantic under sea cable, and the Canadian and U.S. land cables, to link Spain and Britain to their holdings in the Caribbean. Perry's plan required the construction of new lines to link the United States' existing Western Union network to Havana. From there, telegraph lines could eventually extend throughout the Caribbean and to South America. To reach Cuba, a new line would first have to be constructed from some point on the existing Western Union network that served North Florida at that time, down the peninsula, and then by submarine cable to Havana. In 1867 this was accomplished, first with an overland line linking the Western Union office in Lake City, to Punta Rassa, near Ft. Myers. This line passed through Gainesville, Ocala, Sumterville, Bartow, Ft. Meade, Pine Island, and Caloosahatchie. At Punta Rassa, it became a submarine cable to Key West, and then on to Havana. By late 1867, Spain could be in direct telegraphic contact with Havana via Great Britain and Perry's International Ocean Telegraph Company. In the following twenty years a network of submarine cables was laid from Havana to Panama and throughout most of the islands of the Caribbean, as well as ports along the North and East coasts of South America. It wasn't until 1896 that European countries succeeded in reaching the Caribbean, Central and South America by direct submarine cables. It was 1906 before any other U.S. owned cables linked with the Caribbean islands. The Florida-Havana link of the International Ocean Telegraph Company's Florida line provided the world's only telegraphic connection to the Caribbean for 29 years.

EXCERPT FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, AUGUST 1858

ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH --- "On the evening of the 16th of August, the people of the United States were startled by the intelligence that Queen Victoria's message had been received. Crowds assembled around the bulletin boards and the news spread like wildfire. Considerable disappointment was felt, however, in the first instance, caused by a portion only of the Queen's message being sent, but on the following day the succeeding paragraphs were received. The royal message began 'To the President of the United States, Washington: The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work.' President James Buchanan included in his reply: 'May the Atlantic Telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument designed by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world.'" [NOTE: The cable had severe technical problems and completely failed two months later.]

FASTEST CODE SPEED

From 1920 until 1939, one man held the speed record for Morse code reception.  That man was Theodore R. (Ted) McElroy and his fastest speed was 75.2 words per minute, established in the 1939 international competition.  The competition was discontinued after that year.  McElroy also developed his own version of a sending machine which was widely used.  During World War II, he produced telegraph equipment for use by the military and gained some notoriety by his use of incentives, such as free beer for his workers and the use of trumpets instead of factory whistles.  McElroy died in 1963.

U.S. NAVY DOESN'T QUITE GO BACK TO MORSE CODE

NAVY FINDS A USE FOR OLD TECH  By Bob Brewin  Thursday, June 28, 2007  04:04 PM Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek, Va.       When the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group deploys this fall it will use communications that have a high-tech twist on one of the oldest forms of radio communications that the Navy used in the days of Morse Code, said officials of headquartered here. Instead of the "dits" and "dahs" transmitted by Morse Code, the Truman, along with the nine other ships in the strike group, will communicate over high frequency (HF) by sending Internet Protocol-based traffic such as text messages, said Paul Dixon, allied coalition networks action officer for the Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM). The highest levels of the Navy have endorsed the use of high frequency IP communications for intra-strike group communications for one simple reason, Dixon said: It’s much cheaper than satellite communications systems that the Navy embraced in the late 1980s, when the service all but abandoned high frequency as its standard means of communications. Dixon also said its makes no sense to use expensive and often leased satellite communications systems that require a 44,400 mile trip – from a ship to a satellite and then back down to another ship five to ten miles away – when high frequency can easily bridge that gap over free spectrum in the 3 to 30 Megahertz frequency band, Dixon said. Dixon said that high frequency has roughly the same speed as dial-up modems used in the 1980s compared with satellite bandwidth that is as much as 100 times greater. But it is fast enough to meet the command and control needs of today’s strike groups, which are run by text messages and over chat groups based on Internet Relay chat standards. The Navy also has provided the Truman strike group with the ability to send IP traffic over UHF channels, which provides better throughput than the high-frequency band, about 64 kpbs, or slightly more than the dial-up modems built-into most personal computers. Eric Johnson, a professor at New Mexico State University whose specialty is high frequency and wireless networking, said the high frequency’s low throughput is due to the noise inherent on that spectrum band, which is apparent to anyone who has listened to the short wave spectrum. The high-frequency modems the Navy uses – which New Mexico State University helped develop – punches data through that noise with a stable signal thanks to sophisticated error checking protocols, Johnson said. Dixon said that the Navy plans to outfit 25 ships with high-frequency IP systems through 2008 under a “fast track” project backed by the Chief of Naval Operations. Much of the work involves adding computer servers and firewalls to work with high-frequency radios already on the ships, Dixon said. The high-frequency IP project will also make it easier to communicate with allied navies, which rely heavily on high frequency because they cannot afford satellite communications, Dixon said. The Navy’s trip back to high frequency will require going back to offering high-frequency training to the service’s school curriculum, said Chuck Tabor with the NETWARCOM spectrum management division. It’s been so long time since the Navy has used high frequency “hardly anyone [in the Navy] even knows what it is anymore,” Tabor said.

TELEGRAPH FIRE ALARM SYSTEM

The Boston Fire Alarm Telegraph System                                                                                                                                              By Joe Maurath, Jr. Soon after the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F.B. Morse in 1844, the concept of utilizing this method of communication for reporting fires by means of fire alarm signal boxes, wired to the nearest fire station, was realized. This meant that the fire dispatch teams could know of the citizen’s call for help immediately and respond to the location much more rapidly. Fire alarm telegraph systems soon were installed in the larger United States cities and by 1900 had spread to many other communities, especially in the East. The introduction of this system revolutionized communications by permitting messages to be transmitted instantly over long distances. On May 30, 1845 Dr. William F. Channing of Boston and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University published an article in the Boston Daily Advertiser describing in general terms how a practical fire alarm telegraph system in the city of Boston could be constructed. He convinced the Boston City Government in 1851 and funds were appropriated for the construction of such a system, based upon plans he devised with his associate, Moses G. Farmer, a telegraphic engineer. This was to be the first fire alarm telegraph system of its type in the world. The completed system was placed in service April 28, 1852. Staff included a superintendent, fire alarm operators and repairmen. These were the first positions of their type in the world This system embodied all of the principles of fire alarm telegraphy in use today; namely, a closed electrically supervised assembly of circuits, street fire alarm boxes with code wheels and key breaks determining the number of current interruptions which produced coded signals on local instruments at a central office where an operator transmitted signals received over separate fire alarm circuits to the appropriate fire house. The system also featured telegraphic communication by key and sounder between individual street boxes and the central office. Adapted from the August 1997 Yankee Pole Cat Insulator Club Newsletter.   www.insulators.com   Used by permission.

E = MC2 ?
	The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.                        - Albert Einstein

WHO SAYS MORSE CODE IS DEAD?

Morse Code helped to save a stranded UK fisherman on 20 October 2006 when his boat ran aground near Hayling Island after it began taking on water. The incident took place at night. The unidentified boater had no modern safety aids, no radio and no cellular telephone. What he did have was a flashlight that he used to send the three letters, SOS, in International Morse Code. UK Coast Guard rescue officer Steve Mann saw his call for help and arranged for the stricken fisherman to be picked up by a Coast Guard inshore lifeboat. The stranded mariner was luckier than he might have thought. Mann told the press that he had only been with the Coast Guard for the past two years and had never formally been schooled in CW. He says that he just picked up bits of Morse along the way. ARNewsline, World Radio Magazine, January, 2007

Christmas Eve 1906

December 24, 1906 - The North Atlantic - Marconi wireless operators aboard ships of the United Fruit Company sat quietly at their lonely posts in the wireless room, listening intently to the random crackle of the static of distant electrical storms coming from their headphones, their eyes staring blankly at the slowly turning reels of the Magnetic Detector on this cold, dark night.  Earlier in the week they had been notified by company headquarters to be listening at 2000 hours GMT, Christmas Eve, for a special message.  No other details had been given. Suddenly, the dedicated operators were amazed to hear the sound of the human voice on their headphones for the very first time, and then violin music, replacing the normal static of the ether and the Morse coded buzz of spark transmissions.  No doubt, disbelief of what they were hearing was their first thought. The signal originated from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, near Boston, the home of Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian who had previously worked closely with Thomas Edison, at Edison's Menlo Park research laboratory.  The voice was that of Fessenden, who was also the violinist.  He welcomed his listeners, played a wax cylinder recording of Handel's Largo on an Ediphone, then played 'Oh Holy Night' on his violin, singing along to the last verse.  Following that he read several seasonal Bible verses including, "Glory to God in the highest - and on earth peace to men of good will", followed by giving everyone listening a holiday greeting ...... everyone being, at that time, only the wireless operators aboard ships in the cold, lonely North Atlantic, for they were the only ones with the equipment needed to listen for wireless signals.  Until that moment in time, the fledgling wireless technology, then only ten years old, had been used almost exclusively for business and shipping communications, using Morse code.  Then, in an instant, entertainment by wireless was possible, and soon became a driving force behind the rapid expansion of wireless technology and the broadcast industry.  Twenty years later radio stations around the world were broadcasting entertainment programs routinely, thanks to Reginald Fessenden and his adaptation of Marconi's electro-magnetic wireless system. It happened one hundred years ago tonight, Christmas Eve, 1906, and the world was once again, in a small way, forever changed.

TELEGRAPHY AND CRYPTOLOGY

During the American Civil War, wiretapping, signal interception, code making and code breaking brought about the organization of a corps of trained communicators which had great impact on the armies of both the North and the South and eventually, on those of the world. This corps became known as the United States Military Telegraph Corps. In the Confederacy, simple ciphers, code names, and book codes called "dictionary ciphers" were in constant use until a cipher known as the "polyalphabetic vignere" became the standard for both military and government. In the North, a route or word transposition system was used to protect telegrams transmitted by the Military Telegraph Corps, which was under the control of the Secretary of War The exciting technology of the electra-magnetic telegraph and the telegraph cable brought a surge of secret writing and code breaking. These new techniques created a need for more sophisticated codes and ciphers. The Confederacy never attempted a study of code breaking. However, in the North, Lincoln’s telegraph operator, David Bates and two fellow telegraphers, Charles Tinker, and Albert Chandler, became so expert at code breaking that they were known as "The Sacred Three," and were given special status by Lincoln, who ordered that they were never to be disturbed when deciphering intercepted Confederate messages - The use of ciphers and encryption continued after the Civil War. "The story of the election of 1876 as told by the translation of captured cipher dispatches is not a pleasant one for any American to read," reported a Republican newspaper, The New York Daily Tribune, on October 8, 1878. The Tribune reported, "It is correspondence in secret cipher --- the language familiar to conspirators in crime who dare not face the daylight. Targeted were all the encoded messages sent and received by Samuel Tilden’s political advisors and confidants in New York. Portions translated prove that agents were instructed to buy an electoral vote and wore furnished with the money to do it. Telegraph operators were bound to secrecy. The angry editors failed to mention merchants, bankers, foreign diplomats and journalists who also used ciphers and codes to protect their confidential messages in peacetime. That practice was widespread. Angry Democrats charged that there were few encoded Republican telegrams because William Orton, a Republican and President of Western Union, permitted party associates to extract some of these telegrams before the remainder were turned over to the Senate Committee which had subpoenaed them. So the controversy continues to this day, "Who was really elected to the presidency in 1876, Rutherford Hayes, who won the electoral vote, or Samuel Tilden, who won the popular vote?" Although Western Union no longer transmits telegrams, the use of encryption continues to the present time for e-mails forwarded over the Internet as well as for voice transmissions.  Someone always has something that they do not wish for others to know about.  Telegraphy had a major part in those efforts for more than 100 years.                                                                                                                 Submitted by L. A. Bailey

ENCRYPTED TELEGRAMS
	Copies of encrypted telegrams from the files of the Western Union office, Tallahassee, Florida.  These telegrams were transmitted in 1876.    Copies Courtesy of L. A. Bailey