The month of June marks two big milestones: the 246th Army Birthday, and the 161st Anniversary of the founding of the Signal Corps. The Signal Corps started during the Civil War, and had a small but vital role to the Army during that war. Albert James Myer, an Army doctor, first conceived the idea of a separate, trained professional military signal service. He proposed that the Army use his visual-communications system called "wigwag" while serving as a medical officer in Texas in 1856. When the Army adopted his system June 21, 1860, the Signal Corps was born with Myer as the first and only Signal officer.
Myer's Civil War innovations included an unsuccessful balloon experiment at First Bull Run and, in response to McClellan's desire for a Signal Corps field telegraph train, an electric telegraph in the form of the Beardslee magnetoelectric telegraph machine. Even during the Civil War, the wigwag system, dependent upon line‐of sight, was waning in the face of the electric telegraph.
The electric telegraph, in addition to visual signaling, became a Signal Corps responsibility in 1867. Within 12 years, the Corps had constructed, and was maintaining and operating some 4,000 miles of telegraph lines along the country's western frontier. In 1870, the Signal Corps established a congressionally mandated national weather service. With the assistance of LT Adolphus Greely, Chief Signal Officer BG Myer, by the time of his death in 1880,
commanded a weather service of international acclaim. The weather bureau became part of the Department of Agriculture in 1891, while the Corps retained responsibility for military meteorology.
During the first International Polar Year in 1881, the United States conducted two expeditions, one on either side of the continent. One went to Point Barrow, Alaska, and the other went to Fort Conger, in Nunavut, Canada. This latter expedition was the northernmost polar site during this year and was led by the U.S. Army Signal Corps’ First Lieutenant Adolphus Greely.
The Signal Corps' role in the Spanish‐American War of 1898 and the subsequent Philippine Insurrection was on a grander scale than it had been in the Civil War. In addition to visual signaling, including heliograph, the Corps supplied telephone and telegraph wire lines and cable communications, fostered the use of telephones in combat, employed combat photography, and renewed the use of balloons.
Shortly after the war, the Signal Corps constructed the Washington‐Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, introducing the first wireless telegraph in the Western Hemisphere.
On August 1, 1907, an Aeronautical Division was established within the office of the Chief Signal Officer. In 1908, the Wright brothers made test flights of the Army's first airplane built to Signal Corps' specifications. Army aviation remained within the Signal Corps until 1918 when it became the Army Air Service.
With the build-up to World War I, new training and research resources were required. In 1917, land that would later become Fort Monmouth was purchased, and the Signal Corps laboratories were established, later leading to the development of CECOM and the C5ISR community we know today.
But it wasn’t until the last conflict of the 19th century that the Signal Corps began to grow. Working through periods of extreme austerity, the Signal Corps, under the direction of far-sighted and innovative leaders, grew in the 20-year period from the Spanish-American War (1898) through the close of World War I (1918), from a strength of 60 officers and men to over 200,000, and in many ways created the 20th century through its focus on technology.
The drivers for this tremendous change were, in the words of the Chief Signal Officer Brigadier General Adolphus W. Greely in 1898, the “insistent demands of the age for instant communication.” And one of the means for meeting the demands was an open embrace by Signal Corps leaders of the talents and innovations of the academia, industry, and the civilian workforce.
The first challenge came with the declaration of war by Spain on 24 April 1898. Despite the best efforts of BG Greely, the Signal Corps was then a small, far-flung group of 8 officers and 50 men. There were no more than 2 men at any station, and only $800 was available for war expenses.
Once an Act of Congress on 18 May 1898 authorized the President to organize a Volunteer Signal Corps, the Regular Signal Corps sprung into action, recruiting experienced telegraph operators and electricians from around the country, and fielding the first Volunteer Company within 30 days, in time to make a difference to the Santiago De Cuba campaign.
Experienced men were essential, as the role of the Signal Corps was much increased from the Civil War. In addition to essential duties such as operation of permanent military telegraph lines and serving as Signalmen for the Havana and Manila Campaigns -- operating signal flags, telegraphs, and heliographs -- the Signal Corps also had the duties of laying telegraph cables underwater for harbor defenses, connecting telephone lines between forts in the Washington D.C. area and the War Department, installing electrical lines at Army posts for the fire-control systems required by new disappearing guns, military balloon operations for reconnoitering, telegraph censorship, and construction and operation of telephone and telegraph lines in the field. This would be the first use of telephones in conflict. The Signal Corps also had a photography mission, and would pioneer the use of combat photography during this campaign.
At the end of the brief war, America had shown itself a capable player on the world stage, due in no small part to the efforts of the Signal Corps, but that would not mean a significant increase in the fortunes or staffing of the Signal Corps. Not until the advent of World War I would the nature of the Signal Corps change.
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