The grammar of the telegraph in the Late Qing: the design and application of Chinese telegraphic codebooks

Abstract

ABSTRACT The invention of the telegraph was an important chapter in the nineteenth-century revolution in communication. The key to disseminating information at the speed of photoelectricity was to devise a coding system for converting text into electric signals. Based on the widely used Morse code, symbols (letters of the alphabet or numbers) were used to represent phrases and sentences, and various codebooks were compiled for the purpose of transmitting messages confidentially and economically. When international telegraph lines reached China in 1871, the Great Northern Telegraph Company of Denmark devised the first Chinese codebook for sending and receiving telegraphic messages in Chinese. Officials and businessmen in the late Qing period also made many attempts to do this. The Zongli Yamen, the foreign affairs ministry in imperial China, compiled and issued a codebook entitled New Regulations for Telecommunications (Dianxin xinfa), establishing a new mechanism for governmental exchanges of information. Those who did not possess a codebook had to rely on those who did. At the same time, some departments and government-controlled corporations (guandu shangban) compiled codebooks as well, which caused obstructions in intrabureaucratic communication.