Italeri 1:35 Telegraph Poles

Telegraph use began to permanently decline around 1920.  The decline began with the growth of the use of the telephone.  Ironically, the invention of the telephone grew out of the development of the harmonic telegraph, a device which was supposed to increase the efficiency of telegraph transmission and improve the profits of telegraph companies. Western Union gave up its patent battle with Alexander Graham Bell because it believed the telephone was not a threat to its telegraph business. The Bell Telephone Company was formed in 1877 and had 230 subscribers which grew to 30,000 by 1880. By 1886 there were a quarter of a million phones worldwide, and nearly 2 million by 1900.  The decline was briefly postponed by the rise of special occasion congratulatory telegrams. Traffic continued to grow between 1867 and 1893 despite the introduction of the telephone in this period, but by 1900 the telegraph was definitely in decline.

There was a brief resurgence in telegraphy during World War I but the decline continued as the world entered the Great Depression years of the 1930s. After the Second World War new technology improved communication in the telegraph industry. Telegraph lines continued to be an important means of distributing news feeds from news agencies by teleprinter machine until the rise of the internet in the 1990s. For Western Union, one service remained highly profitable—the wire transfer of money. This service kept Western Union in business long after the telegraph had ceased to be important.  In the modern era, the telegraph that began in 1837 has been gradually replaced by digital data transmission based on computer information systems.