The electromagnetic telegraph was created by Baron Schilling in 1832. An electrical telegraph uses Morse code, which signals out the alphabet. Baron Pavel L'vovitch Schilling, a.k.a Paul Schilling was a diplomat of Baltic German origin in service of Russia in Germany who constructed a revolutionary new telegraph, consisting of a single needle system in which a code was used to indicate the characters. The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed by Sir William Foogley Cooke and entered use on the Great Western Railway. It ran for 13 miles from Paddington station to West Drayton and came into operation on April 9, 1839. The Great Western railway was a British railway company, linking South West England, the West Country and South Wales with London. It was founded in 1833. In 1855 a man in Italy named Giovanni Caselli also created an electric telegraph that could transmit images.
The electric telegraph brought information transmission time down from weeks or days to hours and minutes. The faster flow of news from around the world created a new market for daily newspapers.
It started out as the telegraph which helped with the invention of the teletypewriter. The teletypewriter also lead to a large system that used a telephone like rotary dialing to connect teletypes. These machines were called Telex. Telegraphic communication in the mid-19th century did more to change society, argues Tom Standage, it helped with the development of today's Internet.
One challenge the telegraph had was that it had to be connected by wires, and in order to communicate with America it had to cross lots of water and not to mention hills and rugged land. There was also the problem of people interfering with the wires connecting the telegraphs. A war was going on between England and France and so the first thing they targeted was communication.
Sources:
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/morse_hi.html
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelegraph.htm
http://www.telegraph-history.org/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lincolns/nation/gal_tech_4.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/edison/timeline/
