New Brunswick·Roadside History
While access to cell service and high-speed internet can still be issues in parts of the Lower St. John River Valley, in the late 18th century the area was at the forefront of telecommunications.
Optical telegraphs drastically cut down on communication time
CBC News
· Posted: Jul 05, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: July 5
A hill in Evandale would’ve been home to a visual telegraph, which operated similarly to the one pictured on the right. (Khalil Akhtar/CBC & Internet Archive)
While access to cell service and high-speed internet can still be issues in parts of the Lower St. John River Valley, in the late 18th century, the area was at the forefront of telecommunications.
Several sites, including the top of a hill in Evandale, were home to visual telegraph stations, a revolutionary piece of infrastructure that drastically cut the time it took to send and receive messages.
“Prior to the visual telegraph, the fastest that a human being could communicate with another human being in writing was going to be about [160] kilometres … a day,” said Roadside History explorer James Upham.
But with the visual telegraph, a message could easily reach Halifax from Fredericton in a matter of minutes.
What is a virtual telegraph?
Essentially, a virtual telegraph system consists of several signal stations that have line-of-sight communication with each other.
This story was brought to Nouzie by RSS. The original post can be found on https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/kingston-peninsula-visual-telegraph-1.7576442?cmp=rss
