The Morse system uses a single wire between offices. However, this led to a breakthrough for the electric telegraph, as up to this point the Great Western had insisted on exclusive use and refused Cooke permission to open public telegraph offices. The Prussian system was put into effect in the 1830s. However, they were highly dependent on good weather and daylight to work and even then could accommodate only about two words per minute. Others were built even further out as part of the protection of trade routes, especially the Silk Road. Even when his telegraph was taken up, it was considered experimental and the company backed out of a plan to finance extending the telegraph line out to Slough. In 1792, Claude was appointed Ingénieur-Télégraphiste and charged with establishing a line of stations between Paris and Lille, a distance of 230 kilometres (140 mi). Early needle telegraph models used multiple needles, thus requiring multiple wires to be installed between stations. Tacticus's system had water filled pots at the two signal stations which were drained in synchronisation. Signal towers away from the wall were used to give early warning of an attack.

The Chinese signalling system extended well beyond the Great Wall. In July 1839, a five-needle, five-wire system was installed to provide signalling over a record distance of 21 km on a section of the Great Western Railway between London Paddington station and West Drayton. The world's first permanent railway telegraph was completed in July 1839 between London Paddington and West Drayton on the Great Western Railway with an electric telegraph using a four-needle system. The first commercial telegraph was by Cooke and Wheatstone following their English patent of 10 June 1837. It was demonstrated on the London and Birmingham Railway in July of the same year. On 12 June 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone were awarded a patent for an electric telegraph. The first operative electric telegraph (Gauss and Weber, what is control cable 1833) connected Göttingen Observatory to the Institute of Physics about 1 km away during experimental investigations of the geomagnetic field. 26-29 Possibly the first alphabetic telegraph code in the modern era is due to Franz Kessler who published his work in 1616. Kessler used a lamp placed inside a barrel with a moveable shutter operated by the signaller. A telegraph message sent by an electrical telegraph operator or telegrapher using Morse code (or a printing telegraph operator using plain text) was known as a telegram.

The Morse operator distinguished a dot and a dash by the short or long interval between the two clicks. By 1844, the Morse system connected Baltimore to Washington, and by 1861 the west coast of the continent was connected to the east coast. It was used to manage railway traffic and to prevent accidents as part of the railway signalling system. Cooke extended the line at his own expense and agreed that the railway could have free use of it in exchange for the right to open it up to the public. However, in trying to get railway companies to take up his telegraph more widely for railway signalling, Cooke was rejected several times in favour of the more familiar, but shorter range, steam-powered pneumatic signalling. As Apple expanded into more commercial and education markets, they needed to integrate AppleTalk into existing network installations. In February 2011, Cablevision moved the Game Show Network (GSN) from the basic tier to an add-on sports package. Cablevision also looped a public service announcement on each affected channel and forced all of its customers' set-top boxes to channel 1999, which looped the same announcement.

The Electric Telegraph Company, the world's first public telegraphy company, was formed in 1845 by financier John Lewis Ricardo and Cooke. The electric telegraph quickly became a means of more general communication. Many modern motherboards are phasing out the PS/2-style keyboard and mouse connectors in favor of the more modern Universal Serial Bus. Development of the CAN bus started in 1983 at Robert Bosch GmbH. Bosch semiconductors for Automotive. It was used to carry dispatches for the war between France and Austria. During 1790-1795, at the height of the French Revolution, France needed a swift and reliable communication system to thwart the war efforts of its enemies. A system like flag semaphore, with an alphabetic code, can certainly send any given message, but the system is designed for short-range communication between two persons. By 200 BC complex flag signalling had developed, and by the Han dynasty (200 BC - 220 AD) signallers had a choice of lights, flags, or gunshots to send signals. By the Tang dynasty (618-907) a message could be sent 1,100 kilometres (700 mi) in 24 hours. The first means used a combination of black and white panels, clocks, telescopes, and codebooks to send their message.