Preliminary Inventory No. 155, Records of the Office of The Chief Signal Officer, Record Group 111

On June 21, 1860, Congress, at the recommendation of the Secretary of War, passed an act appropriating money to procure equipment and apparatus for a system of signal communication based on a plan devised by Dr. Albert J. Myer, an assistant Army surgeon. The act authorized the appointment of a Signal Officer on the staff of the Army to have charge, under the Secretary of War, of all signal duty and all books, papers, and apparatus connected therewith. Accordingly the post of Signal Officer, with the rank of major, was given to Myer, effective June 27, 1860.

In May 1861 the Signal Officer was recalled from the West to establish a signal system for the Union Army. A conflict over the control of telegraphic communication developed between the Signal Officer and the Superintendent of the United States Military Telegraph, a civil bureau of the War Department made responsible for military telegraph service before the Signal Officer had returned from the West.

At the close of the Civil War the Signal Corps and the United States Military Telegraph were terminated, but an act of July 28, 1866, fixing the military peace establishment, provided for a Chief Signal Officer and a limited Corps. Among the responsibilities assigned to the new Corps was that of equipping and managing the field electric telegraph.

Contents:

• Textual Records
  • 1860-70 period
    • Records of the Signal Camp of Instruction, Georgetown, D.C.
  • 1870-90 period
  • 1890-1940 period
• Audio-visual records
  • Photographs
  • Motion pictures
• Cartographic records

Contents also include Supplement to Preliminary Inventory No. 155 submitted March 1967.

Mabel E. Deutrich

1963, 8.5" x 11", paper, 36 pp.

101-D1963