Editing Electrical telegraph (section)

===Expansion===
As well as the rapid expansion of the use of the telegraphs along the railways, they soon spread into the field of mass communication with the instruments being installed in [[post office]]s. The era of mass personal communication had begun. Telegraph networks were expensive to build, but financing was readily available, especially from London bankers. By 1852, National systems were in operation in major countries:<ref>Christine Rider, ed., ''Encyclopedia of the Age of the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1920'' (2007) 2:440.</ref><ref>{{cite web |first=Taliaferro Preston |last=Shaffner |url=https://archive.org/details/telegraphmanualc00shafrich |title=The Telegraph Manual: A Complete History and Description of the Semaphoric, Electric and Magnetic Telegraphs of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, Ancient and Modern: with Six Hundred and Twenty-five Illustrations |year=1867}}</ref> 
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Extent of the telegraph in 1852
|-
!Country||style="width: 14em;"|Company or system||Miles or kilometers<br>of wire||ref
|-
|United States||20 companies||{{convert|23000|mi|km|disp=or|abbr=on}}||<ref>Richard B. Du Boff, "Business Demand and the Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844–1860." ''Business History Review'' 54#4 (1980): 459–479.</ref>
|-
|[[Electrical telegraphy in the United Kingdom|United Kingdom]]||[[Electric Telegraph Company]], [[Magnetic Telegraph Company]], and others||{{convert|2200|mi|km|disp=or|abbr=on}}||<ref>John Liffen, "The Introduction of the Electric Telegraph in Britain, a Reappraisal of the Work of Cooke and Wheatstone." ''International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology'' (2013).</ref>
|-
|Prussia||Siemens system||{{convert|1400|mi|km|disp=or|abbr=on}}|| 
|-
|Austria|| Siemens system||{{convert|1000|mi|km|disp=or|abbr=on}}||
|-
|Canada|| || {{convert|900|mi|km|disp=or|abbr=on}}||
|-
|France||optical systems dominant||{{convert|700|mi|km|disp=or|abbr=on}}|| 
|}

The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, for example, was created in 1852 in Rochester, New York and eventually became the [[Western Union|Western Union Telegraph Company]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Enns |first1=Anthony |title=Spiritualist Writing Machines: Telegraphy,Typtology, Typewriting |url=https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cpo/vol4/iss1/11/ |journal=Communication +1 |date=September 2015 |volume=4 |issue=1 |doi=10.7275/R5M61H51 |s2cid=14674389 |quote=Article 11}}</ref> Although many countries had telegraph networks, there was no ''worldwide'' interconnection. Message by post was still the primary means of communication to countries outside Europe.

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Worldwide postal speeds in 1852
|-
! colspan="2"|A letter by post from London took
|-
! days !! to reach<ref>{{Citation |last=Roberts |first=Steven |title=A History of the Telegraph Companies in Britain between 1838–1868 |year=2012 |url=http://distantwriting.co.uk/companiesandforeigntraffic.html |access-date=8 May 2017}}</ref>
|-
| 12 || New York in the United States
|-
| 13 || Alexandria in Egypt
|-
| 19 || Constantinople in Ottoman Turkey
|-
| 33 || Bombay in India (west coast of India)
|-
| 44 || Calcutta in Bengal (east coast of India)
|-
| 45 || Singapore
|-
| 57 || Shanghai in China
|-
| 73 || Sydney in Australia
|}

Telegraphy was introduced in [[Central Asia]] during the 1870s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Khalid |first=Adeeb |title=The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia |publisher=University of California Press |year=1998 |isbn=0-520-21356-4 |location=Berkeley and Los Angeles |pages=60–61 |chapter=2: The Making of a Colonial Society}}</ref>