Contains materials documenting the United States military’s use of the telegraph in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, along with copies of legislation related to the telegraph. Military materials concern the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps (or Signal Service) and include photographs, postcards, signaling instructions, and meteorological data. Political materials present include a copy of British House of Commons correspondence on the Canada Pacific Telegraph (1864), an act passed by the Kentucky State Legislature to benefit creditors of the New Orleans and Ohio Telegraph Company (1860), and a U.S. Senate bill authorizing construction of the ultimately unsuccessful Russian-American Telegraph (1864).