I understand how the signals were created (interrupting a constant signal), but since these messages traveled on wires, it seems to me that you could only communicate if you had two people at opposite ends of the same wire (like the string and paper cup “telephone”). This conjures images of someone walking into a telegraph station in Iowa, asking to send a message to Montana, and the tele operator saying, “Sorry, we don’t have a wire connected to Montana, you’ll have to try the tele office in the next county.”
I know that’s not right. How did a message get from A to B?
Telegraph signals were multiplexed early on. This allowed multiple destinations as well as multiple operators at a desitination all sending or recieving signals on the same wire. Different signals were sent at different frequencies. They can travel over the same wire without interfering with each other. At the recieving end a band pass filter tuned to a particular frequency only lets that signal through.
Generally they used a “store and forward” system, similar to the internet, although of course most of the “switching network” was done by humans.
Each orginating operator had a big rate book, which told how much to charge for each location in the country. In cases where a company didn’t have a line to the destination, it normally had an agreement in place with another company that did have a line there, so at some point the telegram would be transfered to the control of the second company. For longer distances, you didn’t send the telegram directly to the destination office. Instead, following your company’s procedures, you send it down the line, usually to one of the main offices located in a major city. There an operator would write down the message, then give it to another operator whose responsibility was to send it on its next step. Depending on the distance and the size of the towns, the messages could be retransmitted this way for a number of steps until it got to its final destination. Also, there were different rates for different delivery speeds, so a batch of messages destined for the same office might be accumulated before being sent.
KXL in Portland, Oregon was first authorized on November 27, 1926.