They had been invited to France by the nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, Emperor Napoléon III. Inspired by the beliefs of the time in scientific progress and free trade, the Emperor introduced wide-sweeping reforms. These included expanding the national railway system and modernising agriculture to end famines, as well as introducing social programmes such as the improvement of education for women. His most visible legacy remains the extensive rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann, which replaced decayed slums with wide boulevards and parks.

 

Haussmann’s designs included a new network of sewers, in which the wires of telegraph lines would eventually be laid. This was in line with the Emperor’s strong interest in new technologies – including telegraphy. He had, for example, supported the creation by inventor Giovanni Caselli of several stations across France to send images by wire through an early version of the fax machine: the pantelegraph. This push to modernise France, and to increase its influence in Europe and beyond, led Napoléon III to propose the world’s first International Telegraph Conference, which began on 1 March 1865.

 

The representatives of twenty, mostly European, countries (see List of Participants) met under the chairmanship of France’s Foreign Minister Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys. He explained that the aim was to rationalise the handling of burgeoning international telegraphic traffic. A general treaty was proposed for this purpose, and because this would need to be signed by national authorities, the United Kingdom was the only European country with extensive telegraph systems that did not participate in the conference: its networks were privately owned, rather than state-run as in most of Europe. But it was felt that, in practice, they would follow the terms of the treaty.

 

 

Drouyn de Lhuys noted that the agreements then in force – the 1858 Brussels and Berne Conventions – had become insufficient to deal with the advance of telegraphy. International telegrams might be subject to multiple sets of regulations that were not wholly uniform. To replace the Conventions, the meeting agreed that the draft of a new treaty would be written by a committee of “special delegates” with technical expertise, mostly the directors of national telegraph networks.

 

The committee of special delegates met sixteen times to thrash out the details of the International Telegraph Convention, and the final draft was presented to the conference at its second session on 13 April. It contained pioneering provisions. These included the introduction of a standard charging system in each country as a whole, rather than by area (with the exception of part of Prussia and the remotest territories of Russia and Turkey). Importantly, a table of tariffs for cross-border messages was annexed to the treaty, with a single monetary unit in the French franc. This would considerably reduce the price of telegrams. In addition, a set of Regulations for International Service had been prepared to stand alongside the treaty. One of the most significant of these required the adoption of Morse code and its instruments – a rare instance of ITU specifying particular equipment.

 

The third and final session of the conference took place on 17 May 1865, when the final documents of the first International Telegraph Convention were formally signed. That date is recognized as the birth of the International Telegraph Union – the precursor of today’s ITU – and is marked each year as World Telecommunication and Information Society Day.

 

The Convention and its Regulations came into effect on 1 January 1866. The treaty was introduced with a statement by its signatories that they were united in their desire to ensure that telegraphic communications between their countries would benefit from “a simple and reduced tariff,” and that the conditions for international telegraphy would be improved. The signatories also stressed that they would establish a “permanent agreement” between their nations, while not interfering with decisions on matters unrelated to the international telegraphic service.

 

The significance of the International Telegraph Convention cannot be underestimated. For the first time, regulations, tariffs, and technology were harmonized across all of Europe, as far as its borders with Africa and Asia.

 

The wider effects upon international relations were also noted. Just before 1865, some signatory states had been at war; the second conflict between Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark had ended the previous year, having also involved Prussia and the Austria. Nevertheless, the telegraph treaty was signed by all. Summarizing the achievement of the conference, Drouyn de Lhuys said: