In the mid-nineteenth century, two distinct telegraphic systems emerged to revolutionize long-distance communication. In Great Britain, William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented a five-needle telegraph. This device utilized five electromagnetic needles on a dial to point directly to letters of the alphabet, meaning operators needed no special training to read messages. However, it required a multi-wire cable, which made long-distance installation prohibitively expensive and logistically complex. Meanwhile, in the United States, Samuel Morse developed a single-wire telegraph. Rather than pointing directly to letters, Morse's system relied on a sequence of electrical pulses (dots and dashes) that represented letters. While operators had to undergo extensive training to master this code, the single-wire setup was highly cost-effective and easily strung over vast distances, allowing Morse's system to quickly dominate the expanding American frontier.
According to the passage, which of the following statements best describes the primary contrast between the Cooke-Wheatstone telegraph and the Morse telegraph in terms of their practical trade-offs?
- AThe Cooke-Wheatstone system was highly cost-effective to construct across remote regions, whereas the Morse system was logistically complex and expensive to deploy.
- BThe Cooke-Wheatstone system required a single wire but relied on complex user training, whereas the Morse system used multiple wires and required no training.
- The Cooke-Wheatstone system was simple for operators to read but expensive to install over long distances, whereas the Morse system was cheap to install but required specialized operator training.Answer
- DThe Cooke-Wheatstone system utilized electromagnetic needles to operate without electricity, whereas the Morse system required electrical pulses to function.