Managing Privacy: Cryptography or Private Networks of Communication in the Nineteenth Century

The issue of privacy in communication networks is not new; nor are the technical solutions that address the matter. This article examines how a broad range of organizations developed private telegraphy in response to privacy concerns in the nineteenth century. Over a century ago, the advent of electric telegraphy prompted the desire to send private messages over the wires. At the time, telegrams were like open letters, and such messages were visible to the clerks and operators who processed them. In response, entrepreneurs developed codebooks and cipher tools to prevent disclosure of sensitive information. Another popular method, as this article demonstrates, was the deployment of private telegraphic wires to enable peer-to-peer communication and prevent third party access. Private telegraphy, a new form of communication, was common in the United States and even more so in the United Kingdom in the late nineteenth century.