He was given a hearing on his idea by an examination board chaired by Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee in 1859, and was authorized to conduct tests of his method.

[18][19] Myer was successful in having this responsibility assigned to the chief signal officer in War Department General Order 29, dated 15 March 1870.

[22] This network peaked at 5,077 miles in 1881, before the growth of commercial circuits and budget cuts forced the Signal Corps to begin retiring its lines.

[2] In June 1880, Congress raised the permanent rank of the chief signal officer to brigadier general, reflecting both its increased importance and parity with similar Army bureaus.

"[24] This issue persisted, and in his first state of the union message in December 1889, President Benjamin Harrison called on Congress to transfer the Weather Bureau to the Department of Agriculture, noting the deterioration of military signaling.

[26] Although the weather reporting network was gone, telegraph communications among coastal defense installations and between military bases remained within the purview of the chief signal officer.

Experiments included observation balloons, telephones, light-weight field telegraph circuits, and training state reserve units in signaling.

In May 1898, Congress authorized the president to create a volunteer signal corps to meet the new needs on a temporary basis for the duration of "the existing war."

There was a particular focus on international cables which terminated in New York, Tampa, and Key West which might be used to transmit sensitive information to Spanish authorities.

In Cuba and Puerto Rico, the chief signal officer took over all the communications networks on the islands during the military occupation after the surrender of the Spanish.

The Signal Corps turned the telephone and telegraph companies over to the newly constituted civilian government in Puerto Rico in February 1901[38] and in Cuba in May 1902.

To reach the remote upper Yukon area, Chief Signal Officer Greely negotiated a cooperative agreement with Canadian authorities to extend their network from Dawson to Fort Egbert.

[47][39] During 1900, the chief signal officer supported the American Expeditionary Force which intervened in China during the Boxer Rebellion, laying telegraph cable from the Taku Forts on the coast to Beijing, keeping pace with the Army.

[48] The hope was that the general staff could force a more unified approach to planning and operations, but as the chief signal officer and other bureau heads continued to command self-contained units which had their mission, funding, and personnel specified directly by Congress, this vision was not fully realized.

[49] One of the roots of the Signal Corps, going back to Albert Myer's wig-wag flags, was the observation of enemy forces and reporting their position.

As European powers built substantial air arms prior to World War I, work on military aircraft in the United States proceeded without the benefit of Congressional funding until 1911.

[55] Several issues in Aviation Section management arose between 1915 and 1917, one of which led to Chief Signal Officer Scriven being censured by Secretary of War Newton Baker.

[2] After war was declared, Chief Signal Office Squier testified before the House Military Affairs Committee that he hoped to build a fleet of 22,625 planes.

[57] In July 1917 Congress passed a $640,000,000 appropriation[58] to fund this fleet, the largest for any single program in American history to that point, without a dissenting vote in the House of Representatives.

This was not the only challenge the war had surfaced, so Congress granted the president the power to override its very specific legislation on government organization to allow him to reorganize for better results.

While enormous progress had been made in establishing America's aerial capabilities in the nine months since Congress funded the program, President Wilson removed responsibility for military aviation from the chief signal officer by executive order on 20 May 1918.

[61][62] Congress passed an extremely detailed law that specified the precise size, structure, and organization of the Army, the National Defense Act of 1916.

[63] The act reduced the size and scope of the general staff, increasing the relative authority and independence of bureau heads, including the chief signal officer.

[64] On the day Congress declared war, the Signal Corps had 55 officers and 1,570 enlisted men, an inadequate force to support the Army expansion contemplated.

[66] As early as 1903, the Signal Corps integrated wireless communications into its network to replace the submarine cable between St. Michael and Nome, Alaska which was broken every winter by the polar ice pack.

[69] This ultimately led to such innovations as simple push-button, crystal-controlled frequency selection as on the SCR-508 radio which was used in Sherman tanks in World War II.

[74] Massive wartime demand for radios, radar, and other electronic equipment, maintenance, and spare parts strained the Signal Corps and the American industrial base.

[2] At the end of World War II, the Army Service Forces organization was abolished in order to eliminate layers of management.

Unlike previous legislation, however, Congress made no attempt to specify the size, composition, and mission of the Signal Corps, leaving discretion to the secretary of the army and the chief of staff.

Its plan would strip the Signal Corps and the other technical services of their operational, training, personnel management, doctrine, and logistical functions.