A collection of approximately 2,235 ephemeral and manuscript items documenting the history of the telegraph between about 1840 and 1940, collected over a period of fifty years by Robert Harris. Thematic areas of emphasis include early United States patents, the first start-up telegraphic associations, the spread of telegraphic lines over the U.S. and Canada, the laying of the transatlantic cables and the rise of Western Union. Archival materials trace the economic and social impact of telegraphic communication within the United States: its integration with fire alarms, weather forecasting, railways, and the military; its acceptance and use by the general public; and the development of the telegraph industry and its workers (operators and their education, trade publications, etc.). The collection also includes a cross section of telegraphic messages on message forms, and multiple archives of telegraph operations and communications. Highlights include a 1842 letter from Samuel F.B. Morse, explaining his intention to give up his art career to promote his telegraph invention, an 1861 letter from Stephen J Field in Sacramento to his brother Cyrus Field in New York, checking on the accuracy of the first transmission across the transcontinental telegraph line, and the only known copy of a 3-foot-long broadside advertising a torch-light procession to celebrate the first successful trans-Atlantic cable of 1858.

Collection documenting the development, business uses, scientific applications, and cultural impact of the telegraph. Materials document the history of the telegraph from early visual systems (sempahores) in the eighteenth century, continuing through the development of the electric telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century and radio in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Material types represented in the collection include pamphlets; photographs; newspapers; magazine articles; letters; telegrams; postcards; advertising materials; works of art; sheet music; artifacts; and additional ephemera.