But the word was coined long before it was discovered that intelligence could be communicated by electricity.

It denoted at first a system of semaphores, or tall poles with movable arms, and other signaling apparatus, set within sight of one another.
There was such a telegraph line between Dover and London at the time of Waterloo; and this telegraph began relating the news of the battle, which had come to Dover by ship, to anxious London, when a fog set in and the Londoners had to wait until a courier on horseback arrived.

And, in the very years when the real telegraph was coming into being, the United States Government, without a thought of electricity, was considering the advisability of setting up such a system of telegraphs in the United States.
The telegraph is one of America's gifts to the world.

The honor for this invention falls to Samuel Finley Breese Morse, a New Englander of old Puritan stock.

Nor is the glory that belongs to Morse in any way dimmed by the fact that he made use of the discoveries of other men who had been trying to unlock the secrets of electricity ever since Franklin's experiments.