TELEGRAPH - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TELEGRAPHAuthored

The Law Mind • 1160 words

Definition

A telegraph is a system or apparatus for transmitting messages rapidly over long distances by means of pre-concerted signals — historically, either visible mechanical signals or, as the term came to be used almost exclusively in law, electrochemical or electromagnetic impulses transmitted along a wire. In legal contexts, the term carries two related but distinct senses:

1. The physical infrastructure. The wire, cable, tubing, casing, and apparatus connected together for the purpose of transmitting telegraphic communications. English statutory usage defined the term in precisely this physical sense.

2. The commercial and regulatory enterprise. The business of transmitting messages for the public by telegraphic means, and the companies organized to operate that business. American legal development centered heavily on this second sense — defining the duties, liabilities, and regulatory obligations of telegraph companies as quasi-public enterprises.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Any process for transmitting arbitrarily long messages over a long distance using a symbolic code; specifically, the electrical device developed in the early nineteenth century to transmit messages using Morse code, including the full network of overhead lines and transoceanic cables.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): An apparatus or process for communicating intelligence rapidly between distant points, especially by means of pre-concerted visible or audible signals representing words or ideas, or by means of words and signs transmitted by electrical action.

The ordinary meaning and the legal meaning are largely aligned in substance, but law pressed further by asking what obligations followed from operating such a system. Common usage treats the telegraph as a device or technology; legal usage treats it as a regulated enterprise with duties to the public — a distinction that drove decades of litigation over message errors, delays, and discrimination in service.

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Common Confusion

Telegraph companies occupy an uneasy position in the doctrinal taxonomy of common carriers. Courts and commentators debated for much of the nineteenth century whether telegraph companies were common carriers of messages in the same sense that railroads and freight carriers were common carriers of goods. The answer varied by jurisdiction and evolved over time: early authority denied the analogy, while later authority accepted that telegraph companies were common carriers of messages, subject to the applicable subset of common-carrier duties. Researchers should not assume that a source treating telegraph companies as outside the common-carrier framework reflects settled or final law; it may instead reflect the earlier, contested position.

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Why It Matters in Research

The legal significance of TELEGRAPH in the Law Mind corpus is almost entirely regulatory and tortious rather than definitional. Researchers tracing this term should be alert to several distinct lines of development:

Infrastructure regulation. The English Telegraph Act of 1863 (26 & 27 Vict. c. 112) defined the term for statutory purposes in terms of physical apparatus. Sources applying this definition are answering an infrastructure-ownership or condemnation question, not a liability question. Do not carry that definition forward uncritically into American cases addressing company duties.

Common carrier status. The most contested legal question involving telegraph companies in the nineteenth century was whether they held common-carrier obligations. Bouvier's reports the early dominant view — that telegraph companies are not common carriers of goods — before noting the corrective: these companies are common carriers of messages, subject to rules applicable in their nature. This evolution is compressed within a single dictionary entry, which can mislead a researcher who reads only the first statement.

Message errors and liability. A major body of case law addresses the liability of telegraph companies for errors in transmission, delays, and failures to deliver. This body of law developed independently of common-carrier doctrine and drew on contract, negligence, and quasi-public-duty theories. Researchers should treat TELEGRAPH COMPANIES as its own research node, not merely an application of general common-carrier principles.

Discrimination in service. American courts and legislatures addressed the obligation of telegraph companies not to prefer certain senders or classes of messages over others. This anticipates later communications-regulation concepts and connects to the regulatory history of the Federal Communications Commission and the broader public-utility framework.

Jurisdictional fragmentation. Before federal preemption became extensive, state courts generated divergent rules on almost every aspect of telegraph company liability. Sources from one state are not necessarily generalizable.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) defines TELEGRAPH almost entirely by reference to the English statute of 1863, which limited the definition to the physical apparatus — wire, casing, and connected equipment. This is a narrower definition than the operational and commercial definition that animated American litigation, and both editions of Black's are conspicuously thin on the American regulatory and liability dimensions of the term.

Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the more useful source for researchers focused on American law. Bouvier's defines the telegraph in functional terms — an apparatus or process for communicating rapidly between distant points, citing Webster for the baseline meaning — and then moves directly into the contested question of company obligations. Bouvier's candidly surfaces the doctrinal tension: early cases held that telegraph companies are not common carriers, but that proposition was later qualified to acknowledge their status as common carriers of messages. Bouvier's also addresses specific operational duties: the prohibition on preferential transmission of dispatches, the right to refuse obscene messages, and limits on the company's ability to second-guess the sender's purpose.

Anderson's Dictionary of Law and the second Bouvier's entry in the source material do not contain usable TELEGRAPH content — those entries appear to be misfiled, containing text on delivery of deeds and submission, respectively. Researchers should not expect those sources to contribute to this term.

What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: the constitutional dimensions of telegraph regulation, the transition from state to federal regulatory authority, and the eventual displacement of the telegraph's legal framework by telephone and later communications law. For those developments, dictionary sources must be supplemented with treatises and statutory history.

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Jurisdictional Note

Telegraph company liability developed primarily under state common law and state statute through most of the nineteenth century, producing significant variation in rules governing message errors, delay, and carrier obligations. Federal legislative intervention, particularly through interstate commerce regulation, gradually displaced state law for interstate transmissions. Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century sources should identify the jurisdiction carefully before generalizing any rule.

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TELEGRAPHmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In the English telegraph act of 1863, the word is defined as "a wire or wires used for the purpose of telegraphic communication, with any casing, coating, tube, or pipe inclosing the same, and any ap- paratus connected therewith for the purpose S of telegraphic communication." St. 26 & 27 Vict. c. 112, § 3.

TELEGRAPHmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

In the English telegraph act of 1863, the word is defined as “a wire or -wires used for the purpose of telegraphic communication, with any casing, coating, tube, or pipe inclosing the same, and any apparatus connected therewith for the purpose of telegraphic communication.” St. 26 & 27 Vict. c 112, § 3.

TELEGRAPHmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

4. In the law of sealed instruments, the final, absolute transfer to the grantee of a complete legal instrument sealed by the grantor, covenantor, or obligor. As a popular word, signifies mere tradition.2 A deed takes effect only from its tradition or delivery, which may be absolute or conditional. Absolute delivery. A delivery to the grantee himself. Conditional delivery. To a third person to hold till some condition is performed by the grantee.3 In the latter case the instrument is delivered as an "escrow" - as a scrowl or writing, not to take effect as a deed till the condition is performed.3 A delivery of a legal obligation made upon condition does not become a legal delivery until the condition is fulfilled.4 The delivery of a deed is essential to the transfer of title. It is the final act, without which other formalities are ineffectual. The grantor must part with possession of the deed or the right to retain it; registry may justify a presumption of delivery. While a delivery of a deed is essential to pass an estate, and there can be no delivery without surrender of the instrument or the right to retain it, such delivery will be presumed, in the absence of direct evidence, from the concurrent act of the parties recognizing a transfer of the title.. Surrender and acceptance are necessary to a complete delivery." Its importance arises from the fact that the deed has taken the place of the livery of seisin of feudal times, when, to give effect to the feoffment of the new tenant, the act of delivering possession in a public manner was the essential evidence of the investiture of title to the land. This diminished in importance until the manual delivery of a piece of turf, and other "symbolic" acts, became sufficient. When all this passed away and the creation and transfer of estates by a written instrument, called the act or "deed" of the party, became the usual mode, the instrument was 1 United States v. McCready, 11 F. R. 225, 234 (1882). * Black v. Shreve, 13 N. J. E. 461 (1860), Whelpley, J. 3 [2 Bl. Com. 307; 30 Wis. 646. • McFarland v. Sikes, 54 Conn. 250 (1886). • Younge v. Guilbeau, 3 Wall. 641 (1865), Field, J.; 5 id. 81; 79 Pa. 15; 4 Del. Ch. 311. Gould v. Day, 94 U. S. 412 (1876), Field, J. See Ireland v. Geraghty, 15 F. R. 45-46 (1883), cases, - note by M. D. Ewell. Best v. Brown, 25 Hun, 224 (1881); 6 Barb. 195; 102 3. The connection between persons descended from a common ancestor; course of descent. Direct line. Persons immediately de scended one from the other. Collateral line. Persons descended from the same ancestor, but not from each other. Paternal line. Descent as traced through the father. Maternal line. Descent traced through the mother. These lines are in turn spoken of as ascending, and descending: proceeding upward, and downward. Lineal; lineage. Lineal implies immediate descent, direct course of descent: 5 as, 1 McDonald v. Hovey, 110 U. S. 621 (1884), cases: R.S. 3 Weber v. Harbor Commissioners, 18 Wall. 70 (1873); United States v. Thompson, 98 U. S. 489 (1878); United States v. Nashville, &c. R. Co., 118 id. 125 (1886), cases; § 1008. United States v. Beebe, 17 F. R. 36, 39-41 (1883), cases: 127 U. S. 344-47 (1888), cases. United States v. Taylor, 104 U. S. 222 (1881), cases; 4 Hughes, 312, 317; 37 N. J. E. 144; 59 Tex. 150, cases. • Speidel v. Henrici, 120 U. S. 386 (1887), cases, Gray, J. 2 Retzer v. Wood, 109 U. S. 187 (1883), cases. L. linea, thread, string. 4 Hamlin v. Pairpoint Manuf. Co., 141 Mass. 56 (1886), cases. See 2 Bl. Com. Ch. XIV. ν. Τo write afar off or at a distance. A wire or wires used for the purpose of telegraphic communication, with any casing, coating, tube, or pipe inclosing the same, and any apparatus connected therewith for the purpose of such communication.4 Includes any apparatus for transmitting messages or other communications by means of electric signals. See CABLE. 1Gk. technicos', belonging to an art. 23 Stephen's History Crim. Law Eng. 347-48. Gk. tēle, afar; graph'ein, to write., 426 & 27 Vict. c. 112 - Telegraph Act of 1863. $32 & 33 Vict. c. 73-Telegraph Act of 1869. See In Dryburg's case, the message, as sent from New York city, read "Send two hand bouquets, very handsame, one of five, one of ten dollars." As received in Philadelphia it read: "Send two hundred bouquets," etc. Before the error was discovered, Dryburg, a florist, had cut flowers to the amount of one hundred dollars, as a jury found.¹ A telegram, like a letter, may constitute an admission, and complete a contract. To charge the sender the original craft must be produced. The sending operator may be called to prove the sender's presence. The company or operator may be compelled to disclose the contents of a dispatch, unless a statute provides otherwise. Any telegraph company organized under the laws of any State, shall have the right to construct, maintain, and operate lines through and over any portion of the public domain, over and along any military or post-road, and over, under, or across the navigable streams or waters of the United States; the lines not to obstruct navigation, or interfere with ordinary travel.1 Acceptance of that provision, as far as government business is concerned, makes the company agent of the United States.2 But the privilege conferred does not involve ex emption from the ordinary burdens of taxation in a State within which a company may own or operate An accepted telegram is a sufficient memorandum lines. 3 within Statute of Frauds Congress may regulate communication by telegraph between the States. And where a State has given exclusive privileges to one company, which would preclude free intercourse, Congress, under the powers "to regulate commerce " and "to establish post-offices and post-roads," may provide for the construction of competing lines. See COMMERCE. A telegraph company holds the same relation to commerce as a carrier of messages that a railroad company holds as a carrier of goods. Both companies are instruments of commerce, and their business is commerce itself. From their essentially different characteristics, the regulations suitable for one of these kinds of commerce would be inapplicable to the other. Within the reservation that it does not encroach upon the exercise of the powers vested in Congress, a State may make such provisions in respect to the buildings, poles and wires of the companies within its jurisdiction as the comfort and convenience of the community may require.7 cases; 2 Kent, 12 ed. [829], cases; 2 Pars. Contr. 6 ed. 257f; Shearm. & Redf. Neg. §§ 549-71; 11 F. R. 1, 10; 27 Iowa, 451; 113 Mass. 301; 15 Mich. 532; 37 Mo. 472; 48 N. Y. 132; 62 Pa. 88; 5 S. C. 358; 19 id. 71; Allen's Tel. Cases; Scott & Jarn. Tel. 1 New York & Wash. Tel. Co. v. Dryburg, 35 Pa. 208 (1860). See further, as to negligence by operator, Wabash R. Co. v. McDaniels, CARRIER, Common. * Trevor v. Wood, 36 N. Y. 307 (1867): 93 Am. Dec. 514-17 (1887), cases; Utley v. Donaldson, 94 U. S. 29 (1876); 4 Biss. 357; 1 Woods, 286; 4 Dill. 431; 39 Iowa, 39; 103 Mass. 327; 20 Mo. 254; 35 Barb. 463; 36 N. Y. 307; 37 id. 457; 41 id. 544; 30 Wis. 605. See 14 Cent. Law J. 262-65 (1882), cases; 3 Dill. 571; 40 Conn. 363; 25 III. 591; 82 id. 73; 49 Ind. 223; 15 La. An. 668; 7 Allen, 548; 37 Miss. 682; 48 N. H. 488; 40 Pa. 9; 29 Vt. 127; 40 Wis. 431; 18 U. C., Q. B. 60. 27 Am. Law Reg. 65-79 (1879), cases; 5 South. Law Rev. 473-520 (1879), cases; 3 Dill. 567; 15 F. R. 713; 58 Me. 267; 7 W. Va. 544; 2 Pars. S. Cas. 274; 13 West. Jur. 122; 20 Law Times, 421. 5 Godwin v. Francis, L. R., C. P. 293 (1870); Reuss v. Picksley, L. R., 1 Ex. 312 (1866); 39 L. J., C. P. 121; 4 H. & C. 588; 6 U. C., C. P. 221. A railroad being a post-road that act of 1866 is paramount over any agreement for the exclusive use of a road by one company. A State may not tax inter-State messages: they are commerce, as well as in the nature of postal service, and exempt from State regulations, except as to regulations of a strictly police character. Any regulation by way of a tax upon the occupation or business of transmitting messages between different States, or as a license to transact business, is unconstitutional.5 Nor may a State tax a company's receipts from inter-State messages." Whether the poles, wires, and instruments are part of the realty to which they are annexed, depends upon the intent with which they were erected." A city may determine the conditions upon which a company shall pass through its limits. After expiгаtion of the time for erecting poles, etc., in pursuance of an ordinance, express direction from the city council, and notice to the company, should be given, before the mayor proceeds to remove the poles. It is no part of the corporate duty of a company to collect and send out market reports. R. S. § 5263: Act 24 July, 1866. 2 Western Union Tel. Co. v. Texas, 105 U. S. 464 (1881). 3 Western Union Tel. Co. v. Massachusetts, 125 U. S. 530 (1888). Western Union Tel. Co. v. Baltimore & Ohio Tel. Co., 19 F. R. 660 (1884), Wallace, J.; Western Union Tel. Co. v. Burlington, &c. R. Co., 3 McCrary, 135 (1852),

TELEGRAPHn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

An apparatus, or a process, for communicating intelligence rapidly between distant points, especially by means of preconcerted visible or audible signals representing words or ideas, or by means of words and signs, transmitted by electrical action.

TELEGRAPHv.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

To convey or announce by telegraph.

telegraphnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Synonym of telegraphy, any process for transmitting arbitrarily long messages over a long distance using a symbolic code. | The electrical device gradually developed in the early 19th century to transmit messages (telegrams) using Morse code; the entire system used to transmit its messages including overhead lines and transoceanic cables. | A visible or audible cue that indicates to an opponent the action that a character is about to take.

telegraphverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

To use a telegraph, send a message by telegraph. | To clearly communicate to another nonverbally, whether by gesture, a change in attitude, or any other sign, especially unintentionally.

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