"The chief chronicler of President Lincoln’s telegraph operations, David Homer Bates (1843–1926) was born in Steubenville, Ohio, to Francis and Catherine Bates. As a teenager, he moved to Altoona, Pennsylvania, and entered the telegraph service in the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which at that time was under the supervision of Andrew Carnegie. In April 1861, Bates and three other cipher operators were ordered to Washington, D.C., to form a new telegraph corps within the War Department—the first time a federal government department had telegraph service. Major Thomas Eckert was appointed superintendent of the telegraph corps shortly after their arrival. Except for two weeks of service in early 1865 as the operator for General Ulysses S. Grant at City Point, Virginia, Bates was stationed for the duration of the war within the telegraph room of the War Department"