Army Signal Corps: This 8-page paper provides an overview of the Army Signal Corps with an emphasis on its history. There is a bibliography.
The Signal Corps' branch insignia is seen on Signal officers' uniform lapels. The red flag with the white center is on the right side, and when subdued, as in a uniform patch, the darker flag is situated on the right side. It was Albert Myer, an Army physician, who first conceived of the idea of a separate, trained professional military signal service. He proposed that the Army use his visual communications system while serving as a medical officer in Texas before the Civil War. When the Army adopted his system on June 21, 1860, the Signal Corps was born, and Myer was the first Signal officer (Tuschen, n.d., p.1). It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the history of the Signal Corps and to explore how it has changed in the communication of today's Army.
Until March 3, 1863, when Congress authorized a regular Signal Corps for the remaining years of the war, Myer was forced to rely on detailed personnel. Some 2,900 officers and enlisted men served, although not at any one time, in the Civil War Signal Corps, and some of Myer's Civil War innovations included an unsuccessful balloon experiment at the first Battle of Bull Run and, in response to GEN George McClellan's desire for a Signal Corps field-telegraph train, an electric telegraph in the form of the Beardslee magnetoelectric telegraph machine (Tuschen, n.d., p.1). Even in the Civil War, Myer's visual system, dependent upon line-of-sight, was waning in the face of the electric telegraph. The electric telegraph, became the Signal Corps' responsibility in 1867, and within twelve years, the corps had constructed, maintained, and 4,000 miles of telegraph lines along the American frontier.
In 1870, Congress mandated a Signal Corps national weather service. Myer, and Lt. Adolphus Greely commanded an internationally acclaimed wea...