Bank clerk Paul Reuter turned old news into news of the day

News travelled slowly until Paul Reuter revolutionised its delivery in the 1850s.

An 1869 portrait of Paul Julius Reuter, founder of Reuters News Agency, by Rudolf Lehmann.

It’s enough to make the modern journalist, operating in a 24-hour news cycle, when the latest headlines are delivered into the palm of a reader’s hand, break out in a cold sweat. But as recently as the 19th century newspapers, reliant on horseback, running or ships travelling from distant lands, often carried news that was already days, weeks, sometimes months, old.

But then a former bank clerk had a brilliant idea that would revolutionise the way the world kept up to date.

In 1851 Paul Julius Reuter established a news service that relied on then state-of-the-art technology known as the telegraph.

He had seen demonstrations of this electric mode of sending messages years before but understood before anyone else how it could be used to quickly deliver the latest information. Initially his service brought financial news to stock exchanges but it later expanded into all kinds of news.

The name Reuters has since become synonymous with breaking news, yet that was not his original name.

Reuter was born Israel Beer Josaphat, 200 years ago today, in Kassel in what was then the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

His father was a provisional rabbi but he was never destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. At 13 he went to work as a clerk in a bank in Gottingen where he came to understand the need for up-to-date financial information.

At the bank he met scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss, from the University of Gottingen and was invited to witness Gauss’s and Wilhelm Weber’s experiments with an electromagnetic telegraph connecting their offices on campus. Gauss and Weber were able to transmit about six words per minute over a wire stretched 3km. They were unable to get financial backing for their invention and it would an American, Samuel Morse, who would develop the first widely used electromagnetic telegraph system in 1837. But young Israel was impressed by what he saw. In 1844 or 1845 Josaphat travelled to London where he converted to Christianity and adopted the name Paul Julius Reuter, later changing it legally. The conversion was so he could marry Berlin woman Ida Maria Elizabeth Clementine Magnus, whose father was a wealthy Lutheran pastor.

Ida’s father helped the ambitious Reuter buy a publishing business in Berlin in 1847. Reuter’s company took
a risk by printing pamphlets for revolutionaries who were involved in the thwarted 1848 revolution.

Forced to flee to Paris, Reuter joined the Agence Havas, a news agency owned and run by Charles-Louis Havas, forerunner of Agence-France-Press (AFP).

After learning the ropes of a news agency he moved to Aachen (Aix-la-Chappelle) to found his own agency.

He acquired carrier pigeons to speed up the messages he sent to Brussels, terminal points of the French and German telegraph lines, thereby providing a vital fast link between Berlin and Paris.

His news was hours ahead of any competitor or the conventional post.

On the advice of Werner Simens, who was laying a telegraph cable under the English Channel, Reuter moved operations to London in 1851, opening his own telegraph service, at the London Royal Exchange.

He signed a lucrative contract with the London Stock exchange to provide up-to-the-minute information on markets in Europe.

In 1857 Reuter became a British citizen. By then he had his sights set on getting English newspapers to subscribe to his news service.

The first was the Morning Advertiser in 1858, soon joined by the London Times. Other papers soon realised they could not afford to miss Reuter’s news feed. The worth of Reuter’s cable service became apparent when, in 1859, The Times printed the text of a speech delivered by Napoleon III, foreshadowing a war, two hours after the speech was given.

Reuter began investing in developing his own telegraph lines
and the spread of submarine cables allowed him to spread operations beyond Europe.

In 1871 his contributions were recognised in Germany when he was elevated to Freiherr (baron) in Hesse (in 1891 Queen Victoria allowed him to use the title baron in England).

Reuter moved in some exalted circles and one of his sons-in-law, Sir Herbert Chermside, later became a governor of Queensland.

The spread of his influence was not without controversy. In 1872 the Shah of Persia gave him huge concessions for telegraphs, railways, mines and forests in Persia. Outrage over the extent of the concessions forced its cancellation soon after.

Reuter set new standards for the rapid delivery of news that were followed by competitors, with whom he also entered into secret agreements dividing up territory.

He retired as managing director of Reuters in 1878 and died in France in 1899. He was buried in South London.

Originally published as Bank clerk Paul Reuter turned old news into news of the day