When did the Overland Telegraph start?
22 August 1872
On 22 August 1872 the construction of the Overland Telegraph line between Adelaide and Darwin was completed. It has been described as ‘the greatest engineering feat carried out in nineteenth century Australia’.
Why was the Overland Telegraph important?
Completed in 1872, the Overland Telegraph Line allowed fast communication between Australia and the rest of the world. It was one of the great engineering feats of 19th-century Australia and probably the most significant milestone in the history of telegraphy in Australia.
Who built the Overland Telegraph?
Charles Todd
The Overland Telegraph Line crossed 3200km through mountains, flood plains and desert. It was one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 19th century. The project was given to the South Australian Superintendent of Telegraphs, Charles Todd.
How did the Overland Telegraph Line work?
Using the Morse key, operators at the stations were able to communicate with the world 24 hours a day—in 1872 it took seven hours to send a message from Adelaide to England. The Overland Telegraph proved an instant success with over 4000 telegrams transmitted in the first year.
Does the telegraph require electricity?
In the 1830s, the British team of Cooke and Wheatstone developed a telegraph system with five magnetic needles that could be pointed around a panel of letters and numbers by using an electric current. All the system needed was a key, a battery, wire and a line of poles between stations for the wire and a receiver.
What happened to telegraph lines?
After World War II much new technology became available that radically changed the telegraph industry. Old wire lines were too expensive to maintain and were replaced by coaxial cable and microwave links.
How far can a telegraph be sent?
Employing the semaphore system invented by French engineer Claude Chappe in 1791, towers spaced 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) apart could relay messages cross-country in minutes. Another widely used visual telegraph was developed in 1795 by George Murray in England.
How fast is a telegraph?
Hand operators averaged 25-40 words per minute while the transmission speeds of automatic telegraphs ranged from 60-120 words per minute for the ink recording automatic telegraphs used in England to 500-1000 words per minute for Edison’s chemical recording system.
When was the Overland Telegraph completed in Australia?
1872: Completion of the Overland Telegraph from Darwin to Port Augusta, South Australia On 22 August 1872 the construction of the Overland Telegraph line between Adelaide and Darwin was completed. It has been described as ‘the greatest engineering feat carried out in nineteenth century Australia’.
When was the telegraph line between Adelaide and Darwin completed?
Camp of Overland Telegraph workers at Roper River, Northern Territory, about 1870 On 22 August 1872 the construction of the Overland Telegraph line between Adelaide and Darwin was completed. It has been described as ‘the greatest engineering feat carried out in nineteenth century Australia’.
When did Charles Todd lay the Overland Telegraph?
In 1870 Charles Todd, using explorer John McDouall Stuart’s maps, organised and lead three teams to lay the overland telegraph wire. Todd completes Telegraph is an excerpt from the film A Wire Through the Heart (55 mins), the third episode of the three-part series entitledConstructing Australia, produced in 2007.
When was the first telegraph line built in Australia?
From the mid-1850s the Australian colonies competed to survey a route to connect their continent with the new telegraph cable in Java (and from there Europe and the world). With Stuart’s successful crossing of the continent in 1862, South Australia won the bid and was granted the Northern Territory to build the line.