Wetaskiwin District Heritage Museum Centre & City of Wetaskiwin Archives

Look at this telegraph. The electric telegraph was invented in 1832 by Samuel F.B. Morse, he became interested in the possibility of electric telegraphy and made sketches of ideas for such a system. Morse later devised a system of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers (Morse Code). The telegraph equipment in our collection was used in Wainwright during WWII to send off troops during the war at the train station (unsure of which station in Wainwright) and was transferred to Wetaskiwin after the war. The operator was G.A. Pettifor. The donor’s father, Bruce Williams, bought the telegraph items at a farm auction in Wetaskiwin in 1983. The Williams family are from Ponoka. The auctioneer mentioned to Bruce that the equipment still works when hooked up (at the time of purchase). This equipment was portable and went from station to station. It currently is being exhibited at MLA Rick Wilson’s office. The photo is from our child’s play area train booth, hopefully we will be open soon.