Army Signal Corps: This 8-page paper provides an overview of the Army Signal Corps with an emphasis on its history

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). Ev

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ctivity in the Pacific, and concerns that the Japanese might strike over that weekend. They did. After that inauspicious beginning, World War II saw a tremendous increase in the responsibilities of the Signal Corps, expanding from a budget of $9,447,439 in 1939 to the sum of $256,652,964 during the course of the war (Thompson, 1957, p.147). The country was beginning to understand that this war would be won by men using modern machines, and the Signal Corps was confronted with the sobering realization that it was the supplier of communication equipment for an Army expected to total about 8,000,000 men. The gigantic task was staggering, taking on the scale of an industrial complex during peacetime. This large scale effort also required training large numbers of men, a task that fell to the Chief Signal Officer, serving under the War Department General Staff. The scope of signal training was large, and the student body was made up of "officers, enlisted men, enlisted reservists, and civilians, and it ranged from men with doctorates in engineering or philosophy to illiterates (Thompson, 1957, p.186). The training facility at Fort Monmouth expanded to establish centers in Florida, Missouri, and California. The tasks of the Sign
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Approximate Word count = 2346
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)