The First Car Phone Was The Civil War Telegraph Wagon

Jalopnik ^ | 2/21/13 | Jason Torchinsky

[Impala64ssa]

It's always a tricky thing to try and pinpoint the first of anything. The first working automobile, the first powered flight, the first beer of the night — all these things are usually surrounded by an impenetrable haze of uncertainty and occasionally, vomit. Often we can make some pretty decent guesses, but this time I feel pretty confident in making an out-and-out statement of what I think is fact:

The first vehicles with on-board electrical communication systems were Civil War Telegraph Wagons.

That means those battery-crammed wooden wagons are the direct ancestor of cars with radios, radiophones, car phones, all the way down to you sitting in your car with your iPhone or whatever in your hand.

Let that sink in.

[Impala64ssa]

Interesting bit of Civil War history.

[umgud]

My current cell phone.

[bigbob]

Very interesting, thanks. I just can’t understand why some people feel the need to throw F-bombs at every single thing they comment on, relevant or not.

[thecodont]

Thanks for posting this interesting bit of history.

[RedMonqey]

Telegraph aint an “Telephone”

[higgmeister]

It is not the same thing at all. The Telegraph Wagon was not wireless and did not have a switching capability.

As a side note; we still use giant 48 volt battery plants in telecommunications facilities.

The junction location where I once worked at had least six of these with large exhaust fans and barrels of soda in each room in case of acid spills.

[Bobalu]

I love Morse Code. :-)

The Civil War history of telegraphy is indeed interesting.
Many operators were boys of just 12...amazing.
They used the old American Morse Code though, now the International Morse is the norm. American Morse worked well with the old ‘sounder’ equipment..(clicketty clack clack)

Many consider the Morse Code as the first binary communications protocol but that is incorrect. Morse does not use the binary system of on/off or zero and one. It uses on,off and various lengths of empty space(time). Without the spaces it would be meaningless noise.
The various spaces are based on the length of the single dit. One dit length space between the elements of a character, three between characters...etc.

Morse is mostly just a curiosity in the modern world. It was once a requirement to get an Amateur Radio license.

Morse is the best way to get a signal through in noisy conditions.... if sent at extremely slow speed and decoded by a computer you can communicate worldwide with less than a milliwatt of power.

I love Morse :-)

QRP 4ever

[DustyMoment]

The first vehicles with on-board electrical communication systems were Civil War Telegraph Wagons.

Sorry, the premise is waaaaaaayyyyyyy offbase. Technically speaking, there is a distinct difference between a telegraph and a telephone and the two do not operate the same. To call the Civil War Telegraph Wagon the "First Car Phone" may be cute, but it is technically inaccurate.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

You'll like this book:

I read it when it was first published. It is an amazing story of huge technological risk, massive capital investment, and triumph over adversity and failure to build the first transoceanic underwater cable linking Europe and North America.

I was unaware of the "battery wagons" mentioned in this article. I knew of the importance of telegraphy in the CW, but never thought about mobile telegraphy.

[PA Engineer]

The Victorian Internet is also a good read.

[Vince Ferrer]

Morse code vs. Texting

[Harold Shea]

Have read one of the first act in WW1 was cutting Germany’s

Trans Atlantic cable,forcing them to use radio.

[higgmeister]

I had to learn Q and Z signals as a Tech Controller in the Air Force.

INT QRK = What is the intelligibility of my signal?
ZBK2 = Your transmission is garbled.
ZUJ = Standby.
ZFR = Disregard previous transmission.
INT QRK = What is the intelligibility of my signal?
QSY = change radio frequency.
INT QRL = Are you busy?
ZBM = give me a competent operator.

I didn't have to learn Morse Code but the Ditty Boppers were on the hallway below ours. It was the oddest thing in the world to hear a classroom of men in unison saying a seemingly endless stream of dits and dahs while the instructor pointed to the symbols on a board. They would get really mad if we cut through their hallway to get to the break pad outside. Morse Systems Specialists were sent to remote sites on the Russian frontier and other locations to constantly monitor radio signals.

[fella]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that some of the Yankee observation balloons were wired for telegraph.

[dr_lew]

I love Morse Code

Let me see : .. ._.. _ _ _ _.. . _ _ _ _ _ .._ ... . _._ _ _ _ _ _.. .

OK! "I LODE MOUSE YODE" - Excellent! I'm sure they got the message.

[thecodont]

Thanks for the book mention. It led me (on Amazon) to another title, “Where Wizards Stay Up Late” — more on the invention of the Internet. A snipped on the invention of e-mail led me to this link:

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~scotch/innovation/inventing_email.pdf

“In a paper published in 1978 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, two of the important figures in the creation of the ARPANET, J. C. R. Licklider and Albert Vezza, explained the popularity of e-mail. “One of the advantages of the message systems over letter mail was that, in an ARPANET message, one could write tersely and type imperfectly, even to an older person in a superior position and even to a person one did not know very well, and the recipient took no offense. . . . Among the advantages of the network message services over the telephone were the fact that one could proceed immediately to the point without having to engage in small talk first, that the message services produced a preservable record, and that the sender and receiver did not have to be available at the same time.””

It’s sort of sad to see in this paragraph the seeds of incivility being sown by the new technology.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Impala64ssa. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

...all these things are usually surrounded by an impenetrable haze of uncertainty and occasionally, vomit.

Okay, now I get the "vomit" part.

[SunkenCiv]

And for the slow kids:

The first vehicles with on-board electrical communication systems were Civil War Telegraph Wagons.

[thecodont]

Thanks for the book recommendation.