The telegraph was early, the telegraph was invented in 1837, and the telephone was invented in 1876.
European scientists gradually discovered the various properties of electricity in the 18th century. At the same time, some people began to study the possibility of using electricity to send messages. As early as 1753, a British man proposed using static electricity to send telegraphs. .
In the United States, Samuel Morse invented the telegraph at nearly the same time and obtained a patent in the United States in 1837. Morse also developed a method of encoding letters and numbers for sending, called Morse code.
The telephone was invented by American A.G. Bell in 1876. He used two wires to connect two transmitters and receivers with identical structures and equipped with vibrating diaphragms on electromagnets, and first realized communication between the two ends. However, the call distance is short and the efficiency is low.
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Military uses of telegraphs
The Civil War that broke out in the United States from 1861 to 1865 was the first time in the world that telegraphs were used for military purposes. Both warring parties In addition to using Morse code to communicate between troops, it also cooperated with the newspaper industry to spread battlefield news.
In the Sino-French War in 1884, the French army invaded Taiwan. Liu Mingchuan, the governor of Taiwan and commander of the Qing army, also made good use of the telegraph built during the Ding Richang period to report the war in Taiwan to the Qing court.
During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the Japanese intercepted telegrams sent back to Beijing by Li Hongzhang and learned the Qing court's information on the indemnity and peace.
During the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Japan established a telegraph listening station in Taiwan. It learned that Tsarist Russia’s Baltic Fleet was sailing through the Taiwan Strait to aid the war zones in Port Arthur and Tsushima waters, and Japan successfully annihilated Tsarist Russia in one fell swoop. fleet.
During World War II, the Germans developed the Enigma cipher transmitter, which temporarily left the Allies helpless. However, it was finally deciphered by the Allies' more advanced cipher machines and was used in the Atlantic Ocean. In the naval battle, the German U-boat fleet commanded by telegraph communication was annihilated.
During the Kuomintang Civil War, both sides of the Kuomintang also reused telegram encoding/decoding personnel. However, the People's Liberation Army not only used telegrams to intercept national military intelligence, but also cooperated with infiltration personnel behind enemy lines and the operation of popular support. , to gain an advantage; see also the movie "The Wind Listener".
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