Western Union absorbs US Telegraph and takes control of virtually all the American telegraph industry

Hiram Sibley had founded Western Union in 1851 and in ten years built it into one of the dominant American communication companies, boasting transcontinental lines.  When Western Union absorbed the US Telegraph Company around this date, it achieved a virtual monopoly over the telegraph industry.  (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
W. Bernard Carlson, "The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardner Hubbard and the Formation of the Middle-Class in America, 1875-1880," in  Michael Thad Allen, Gabrielle Hecht (eds.), Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), 28.
    Date Certainty
    Estimated
    Type
    Business/Industry
    How to Cite This Page: "Western Union absorbs US Telegraph and takes control of virtually all the American telegraph industry," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/45356.