AP at 175: A Photographic History
The Associated Press (AP) celebrates its 175th birthday in May 2021. To mark this milestone, the AP Corporate Archives has assembled a concise visual history of the organization, offered here in an eight-part monthly blog, “AP at 175.” In images drawn from the Corporate Archives and our vast news photography collection, we trace both change and constancy in a global news organization that has championed objective journalism since 1846. Images have been chosen for their visual and narrative power. Collectively, they document AP’s origins and governance, its gifted journalists and editors, and its continuous technological innovation on behalf of the members.
Valerie S. Komor
Director, AP Corporate Archives
Part 1: Beginnings, 1846-60
Hudson Broadside (detail), engraved and hand-colored with ink flourishes. This is one of six vignettes bordering the broadside that illustrates various methods of news transmission: horse, sleigh, steamship, rowboat, railroad and a message sealed inside a glass bottle adrift on the ocean. APCA.
Between AP’s founding in 1846 and the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860, the telegraph continued its rapid expansion up and down the East coast and westward. The first transcontinental telegraph, completed October 24, 1861, joined existing networks by means of a segment between Omaha and Carson City.
As this revolutionary technology took hold, AP grew apace, establishing agreements for the exchange of news from across the country and refining its procedures for collecting and transmitting foreign news. New Hampshire native and pigeon trainer Daniel H. Craig (1814-95), AP’s second General Agent (today’s CEO), envisioned a national newsgathering and distribution system, based upon the telegraph, which he codified in the 1851 circular, “The General News Association of New York.”
Early on, Craig embraced the ideal of factual reporting. During New York state legislative elections in 1853, he asked his reporters to send accurate election results, based on the best information at hand, but were that not possible, he added, “we suggest the propriety of sending nothing.” The “culture of the fact,” as historian Jill Lepore describes it, rooted itself firmly from the start, forming the bedrock of AP identity and mission.
Moses Yale Beach (1800-68), ca. 1845. Oil on canvas. APCA.
Wallingford, Connecticut native Moses Yale Beach was no journalist. He was a cabinetmaker and machinist and entrepreneur. Rising to become second publisher of The Sun in 1838, by buying out his brother-in-law, he began looking for ways to make the paper profitable. In the spring of 1846, he saw an opportunity to establish a cooperative that would distribute newsgathering expenses among members, while deploying old and new technologies: boat, pony, horse and telegraph.
During the Mexican-American War, which began on April 25, 1846, news dispatches originated in Veracruz, crossed the Gulf of Mexico by boat, and landed at Mobile, Alabama. There, Beach employed an express rider to beat the U.S. mail coach to Montgomery, where the dispatches rejoined the mail for the trip to Richmond, then the telegraph terminus. Beach did not pay his riders unless they gained a 24-hour edge over the mail.
When he offered an equal share in the venture to the New York City dailies, four papers accepted: The Courier and Enquirer, The Journal of Commerce, The Express and The Herald. With The Sun, they were soon referred to as “the associated press of this city.”
The Sun Carriers’ Address, Jan. 1, 1858 (detail). Engraved by W. M. Howland. Printed by J.F. Trow.
APCA.
This is a rare example of the annual greeting, presented in flowery verse and handsomely printed, sent by newspaper carriers to their customers on New Year’s Day to solicit a cash gift. The earliest carriers’ greeting (which does not survive) dates to 1750 in the United States, marking the onset of a tradition that continued into the 1950s at some newspapers. This particular address concludes:
Now, ere we say the parting word,
Let the Sun Carrier’s plea be heard;
Through storm and shine, at early morn,
The Sun to you by him is borne;
So to its patrons we commend
And let your hands be free and full,
And let your gifts be bountiful,
When, with The Sun, he does appear
To wish A HAPPY, GLAD NEW YEAR.
The Sun subscription ticket, ca. 1840. APCA.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States during 1831 and 1832, New York City was the hotbed of innovative newspapering. The Sun, established by Benjamin Day in 1833, led the field in innovation. Eager to sell papers during a severe banking crisis, Day priced the Sun at one penny and outsold his rivals. He hired reporters rather than rely on his readers for news. But it was the innovative business plan of his successor, Moses Yale Beach, which would have far-reaching consequences for the distribution of news.
Memorandum of Moses Sperry Beach, June 1872. APCA.
Moses Sperry Beach, son of AP founder Moses Yale Beach, dates this memorandum on the verso, writing “Death of Bennett June/72.” He is referring to the death on June 1, 1872 of New York Herald publisher, James Gordon Bennett Sr. Bennett, a brilliant editor and longtime rival of Beach, had enjoyed taking credit for founding the Associated Press. With Bennett’s death, the younger Beach sets the record straight, recounting the origins of AP “during the existence of the Mexican War in 1846-47” and listing the cooperative’s signatories in signing order, suggesting he was, with his father, “in the room where it happened.”
Broadside honoring New York Herald Managing Editor Frederick Hudson (1819-75), March 22, 1866.
Engraved, decorated in ink, and bordered by 18 salted paper portraits (glued down) of members of the Executive Committee of the New York Associated Press. APCA.
That this piece of ephemera survives is a miracle of sorts. In general, broadsides created on wood pulp paper do not fare well over time unless carefully preserved. But this elaborate “get well card,” ornamented with engraved vignettes, elaborate scrollwork and text, and adorned by miniature portraits of leading newspaper publishers, has defied Time. The portraits of Moses Yale Beach and his sons, Moses Sperry Beach and Alfred Ely Beach, are visible in the upper right corner. Four portraits were made by Mathew Brady in his New York studio: Erastus Brooks (New York Evening Express), James Gordon Bennett Sr. (New York Herald), Gerard Hallock (Journal of Commerce), and Henry J. Raymond (The New-York Times).
Brass and wood telegraph key, 1844. Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History, Western Union Telegraph Collection, Washington, D. C.
This key was made by machinist Alfred Vail (1809-56) of Middletown, N.J. for use on the first Baltimore-Washington telegraph line. With his scientific partner Samuel F. B. Morse, Vail used this key to demonstrate the telegraph to Congress on May 24, 1844.
The telegraph marks a watershed in human communication. News that had previously traveled as fast as the fastest boat, horse, pigeon, sleigh or rail car now moved instantaneously, often arriving at its destination the same day it was sent. People living far from one another could read the same information at the same time, an astonishing development that helped to knit the country, and communities, together.
New York Bay from the Telegraph Station, ca. 1835-56. Hand-colored lithograph published by Nathaniel Currier. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
Harbor News Association contract, June 1, 1848. APCA.
This is a contract between the five members of the New York Associated Press to share the costs of maintaining the newsboat, Naushon, in New York Harbor for the purpose of collecting foreign news from incoming ships.
For generations, historians accepted this contract as evidence of AP’s founding in 1848, lacking any earlier documentation. Not until communications historian Menahem Blondheim undertook new research for his book, News Over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 (Harvard, 1994), did the circumstances of AP’s founding become clear. Consulting the Moses Sperry Beach Papers, then in the hands of the Beach family, Blondheim argued (based on the 1872 memorandum pictured above) that AP was organized in 1846, not in 1848. The AP acquired the Beach Papers from the family in 2005.
Royal Mail Steamship Scotia … Off Cape Race Throwing Overboard the New York Associated Press Packet, ca. 1861-72. Hand-colored lithograph by S. Walters, published by Currier and Ives.
Courtesy American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.
Daniel H. Craig, who served as AP General Agent from 1851 to 1866, made his name in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the late 1840s, where he organized a system of collecting European news from incoming ships heading for first landfall at Cape Race. Small but swift rowboats, like the AP vessel depicted here, nearly swallowed by an angry sea, caught the packets tossed down to them and sailed quickly to shore. There, agents sent the packets by pigeon and pony to the telegraph head in Boston. Craig was famous for training his own pigeons to fly directly to Boston, bypassing Halifax altogether. Such ingenuity endeared him to a young AP, who hired him rather than compete with him.
Watercolor drawing depicting the front elevations along Broadway from the Martyr’s Monument to just north of Liberty Street, 1860. Courtesy The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections.
The AP’s main office at 83 Liberty stood at the northwest corner of Broadway and Liberty until it moved in 1875 to 195 Broadway at Dey, the Western Union building designed by George B. Post.
New York Associated Press General Agency cover with the 83 Liberty Street address printed inside a circular belt, ca. 1870. Courtesy Lee Jones, Austin, Tx.
Many have pondered the significance of the circular belt in early AP logotypes. It may reference the leather bags worn by pony express riders. The roundel style continued to influence the logotype until 1981, when a newly designed logo, using just the letters A and P, was copyrighted.
New-York Associated Press Telegraphic Agency cover, with embossed lettering inside a blue cameo, ca. 1849. APCA.
Telegraph operators worked apart from editorial staff until 1914 when AP moved to 51 Chambers Street and all functions came under one roof. In 1925, AP moved uptown to 383 Madison, then to 50 Rockefeller Plaza in 1938, where it remained for 66 years. In 2004, AP moved to 450 West 33rd Street and in 2017 returned downtown to 200 Liberty Street.