The telegraphs in Malta during the Victorian era

Abstract

Spoilt as we are by split-second communications world-wide, it is virtually impossible for us to imagine what it must have been like in the 1840s to receive or transmit messages and information over very long distances. A person who wanted to communicate with far away places had only one way open to him: the mail. No telephone, no radio links, no fax machines, no teleprinters, no telegrams, no satellites, no fibre optics. Just a slow-moving letter that could take weeks or months to reach its destination. The discovery of electricity was to be a veritable turning point. A few visionaries, in an age of great scientific curiosity and experimentation, had the intuition that electricity could be disciplined to carry messages. [excerpt]