Acoustic Telegraphy

Acoustic telegraphy was also known as harmonic telegraphy. During the late 19th century, inventors developed methods of multiplexing (transmitting more than one) telegraph messages simultaneously over a single telegraph wire by using different audio frequencies or channels, for each message. A telegrapher used a conventional Morse key to tap out the message in Morse code. The key pulses were transmitted as pulses of a specific audio frequency. At the receiving end a device tuned to the same frequency resonated to the pulses but not to others on the same wire.

Inventors who worked on the acoustic telegraph included Charles Bourseul, Thomas Edison, Elisha Gray, and Alexander Graham Bell. Their efforts to develop acoustic telegraphy, in order to reduce the cost of telegraph service, led to the invention of the telephone.

Some of Thomas Edison's devices used multiple synchronized tuning forks tuned to selected audio frequencies and which opened and closed electrical circuits at the selected audio frequencies. Acoustic telegraphy was similar in concept to present-day FDMA, or Frequency Division Multiple Access, used with radio frequencies.

The word acoustic comes from the Greek akoustikos meaning hearing, as with hearing of sound waves in air. Acoustic telegraphy devices were electromechanical and made musical or buzzing or humming sound waves in air for a few feet. But the primary function of these devices was not to generate sound waves, but rather to generate alternating electrical currents at selected audio frequencies in wires which transmitted telegraphic messages electrically over long distances.