ABSTRACT
Soon after the regional telegraph companies began wiring the nation between cities, local telegraph companies emerged to try to wire businesses and homes together within cities. As early as 1845, a short intracity telegraph line was erected in New York City by future Western Union pioneer Ezra Cornell, attached not to poles but to buildings; however, the public was not very interested. A similar fate befell Henry Bentley ten years later. In trying to put together his own intracity telegraph system in New York City, he came up with a system of installing boxes in public places, such as drug stores, where outgoing messages could be deposited. Customers were to purchase small postagelike stamps as payment, and messenger boys would pick up the messages in batches and bring them to the telegraph office. But underpayment in stamps and illegible script caused the project to fail. Neither an all-electric nor an all-physical system worked within New York City.2
