Women in telegraphy

Women in telegraphy have been evident since the 1840s. The introduction of practical systems of telegraphy in the 1840s led to the creation of a new occupational category, the telegrapher, telegraphist or telegraph operator. Duties of the telegrapher included sending and receiving telegraphic messages, known as telegrams, using a variety of signaling systems, and routing of trains for the railroads. While telegraphy is often viewed as a males-only occupation, women were also employed as telegraph operators from its earliest days. Telegraphy was one of the first communications technology occupations open to women.

Demonstration of a successful system for sending telegraphic messages by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844 quickly led to the development of a telegraphic network in the eastern United States, constructed and maintained by a number of private companies. Operation of this network required skilled operators at each station, capable of sending and receiving messages in Morse code. The shortage of qualified operators led to the hiring of women as well as men to fill a rapidly growing need for operators in the late 1840s as the telegraph spread across the country. Sarah Bagley (1806 - ?), a women's rights advocate and founder of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, became the telegraph operator for Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith's New York and Boston Magnetic Telegraph Company in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1846. She probably became aware of the telegraph and its potential from her previous work as an editor for the reform newspaper, the Voice of Industry. Phoebe Wood (1816-1891), sister of Morse's associate Ezra Cornell and wife of telegraph entrepreneur Martin B. Wood, became the telegrapher in Albion, Michigan, in 1849, after Cornell's business partner John James Speed pointed out the need for operators in sparsely populated frontier areas.

Initially used to transmit personal messages, business transactions and news reports, the telegraph began to be used for train routing by the railroads as well in the 1850s. Elizabeth Cogley (1833-1922) of Lewistown, Pennsylvania, became one of the earliest women to work as a railroad telegrapher when she was hired by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1855.

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