Organized military signalling in the United States owes its birth to this man, one Albert James Myer.

 
Born in Newburgh, New York State on the 20th September 1827, Myer studied at Hobart College,
Geneva, New York and in 1851 graduated as a Medical Doctor.  After practicing as a physician for
three years he gained a commission in the Regular Army as an assistant surgeon.  He served in New
Mexico and it is alleged that his ideas for a military signalling system were first formulated by
watching Comanches making signals with their lances to other groups of Indians on adjacent hills.  His
interest in the subject of signalling occupied much of his spare time and he eventually devised a system
of signals for which he took out a patent.  In 1858 a board was convened to look at Myer’s ideas and as
a result experiments were initiated by the Secretary of War.  In these trials Myer was helped by two
Lieutenants, Walworth Jenkins and one Edward Porter Alexander (more of whom later.)

In 1859 the Secretary of War commended Myer’s system to Congress. As a result the following bill
was passed:
‘For the manufacture or purchase of apparatus and equipment for field signals $2,000; and that there
be added to the staff of the army one signal officer, with the rank, pay and allowance of a major of
cavalry, who shall have charge under the direction of the Secretary of War, of all signal duty, and all
books, papers and apparatus connected therewith.’

In July 1860 a General Order was issued appointing Major Myer the first signal officer in the US
Army.  Myer gathered together a small nucleus of men and on 25th November 1860, having completed
a course of instruction, he marched from Fort Defiance, Arizona to Fort Fauntleroy, New Mexico with
a fledgling signal party consisting of himself, two other officers and sixteen men.  The purpose of the
march was to practice and test the signalling procedures, and gave Myer the chance to continue their
development.  He remained in New Mexico until June 1861 and his soldiers accompanied a number of
patrols and expeditions, during which they had ample opportunity to practice and demonstrate the value
of Myer’s signalling system.  In December 1860 a movement in force in the area below Zuni, New
Mexico was planned.  The movement would be by two columns.  The first one, under a Colonel Canby,
would be accompanied by Major Myer and a Lieutenant Wagner. The other column would be
commanded by a Captain Lafayette McLaws of the 7 th Infantry, and was accompanied by Lieutenant
Rich as his signals officer.  This expedition gave McLaws the opportunity to see the signal troops in
action and to gain first hand experience of their value, which was to prove significant some three years
later at Gettysburg – but more of that later.

On the 6th May 1861 Myer was relived of his duties in New Mexico and ordered to proceed to
Washington to make a report on his activities.  He duly reported to General Scott at the Headquarters of
the Army in New York, but as Washington was about to become the base for future operations it was to
there that he was directed and on 3rd May he set about establishing his base.  By June 1861 Myer had
organized a Camp of Instruction at Red Hill in Georgetown in order to train signallers.  He also
established an Executive Department or headquarters for the Chief Signals Officer at 158F Street.  The
primary purpose of the Executive Department was as a place where the Chief Signal officer could work
in peace away from the Camp of Instruction.  It eventually also appears to have acted as a recruiting
office for the US Signal Corps when it was formally formed 2 years later.  However, between 1861 and
then, the embryonic Corps progressed well, grew in size and its creation was formally recognised in an
Act of Congress in March 1863. 

In parallel Edward Porter Alexander had resigned his commission in the US Army at the start of the
war and joined the Confederate Army where he was initially placed in charge of its own emerging
signal corps.  He would stay in this role until after First Manassas, but would ultimately go on to be the
Chief of Ordnance of the Army and turned over his signalling duties to a Captain William Norris   (who
would ultimately rise to the rank of Colonel).  The Confederate Army was in fact ahead of the Union
Army in formally establishing a Signal Corps, and did so on the 19 th April 1862 when the Southern
Congress authorized the President to appoint ten lieutenants or captains and ten infantry sergeants to a
signal corps, that could be attached either to the Engineer Corps or to the Adjutant and Inspector
General’s Department, as he thought best (in fact the latter was chosen.)  As a result, Army
Headquarters in Richmond issued General Order No. 40 on the 29th May 1862.  This declared that:
‘A signals officer will be attached to the staff of each general or major general in command
of a corps, and of a major general in command of a division.  These signal officers will
each be assisted by as many signals sergeants, and instructed non-commissioned officers
and privates, selected from the ranks for their intelligence and reliability, as circumstances
may require; and as many lance sergeants as are required may be appointed’[2]

On the 27th September 1862, the Confederate Congress authorized an increase in the Corps to include
one major, ten first and ten second lieutenants, and 20 more sergeants.  All told during the Civil War, 61
officers were commissioned as signals officers, and some 1,500 men were detached from other
branches to serve in the Confederate Signal Corps.  In the field they were formed into squads of three
to five mounted men commanded by a lieutenant or sergeant, and assigned to an infantry division,
cavalry brigade or corps headquarters.

The formation of signal corps in both the Union and Confederate armies was a significant step and put
them both well ahead of other nations.  In the United Kingdom the first formal signalling organization
was the Telegraph Battalion, Royal Engineer formed in 1884 following the success of ‘C’ Telegraph
Troop Royal Engineers, which had been formed in 1870.  However, it was not until 1920 that a
dedicated signalling organization, the Royal Corps of Signals would be formed.  In France a similar
pattern emerged with the formation of the Engineers Telegraphic in 1871 but the formation of an
independent Signal Service did not happen until one was created in the Vichy French Army in 1942. 
Whilst in Germany many of the pre-unification states such as Prussia and Bavaria had formed telegraph
detachments within their Engineers in the 1870s, but it was not until 1899 that the German Army has its
own signal corps.