Our symposium analyses the various meanings embedded in the concept of intelligence in relation to the medium of (wired and wireless) telegraphy. The papers explore how telegraphy interacted with and redefined multiple aspects of intelligence from espionage to engineering. Indeed, these papers will show that the relationship between telegraphy and intelligence reconstituted the place of science and technological knowledge in society and the state. The role of intelligence in telegraphy is multifaceted: it encompasses not only the production and appropriation of knowledge on telegraphy, but also the dissemination and use of information sent through the telegraph. Two papers will focus on the production of telegraphic knowledge within the contested realm between amateurs and experts. Niklaas Hofmann (Freie Universität, Berlin) will examine how the military and radio amateurs built up international networks of knowledge exchange through the example of the emergence and use of wireless telegraphy in Argentina. Dr. des. Simone Müller-Pohl (Freie Universität, Berlin) will use the controversies surrounding the growing distinction through professionalization between telegraph engineer and telegraph operator to show how telegraphy contributed to the increasing professionalization of scientific knowledge in the late nineteenth century. Two other papers will focus on the products of intelligence in relation to telegraphy as technology-in-use. Dr. Heidi Tworek (Harvard University) will explore the equivocal definition of intelligence as both espionage and information in Germany during World War I. Her paper will show how war created a greater need for particular types of intelligence and influenced innovations in wireless telegraphy, while techniques and personnel from espionage divisions managed wireless news supplied by Germans across the globe. Catherine Davies (Freie Universität, Berlin) will analyse the interplay of ‘old’ and ‘new’ technologies in the creation and management of confidence through financial intelligence during the financial crisis of 1873. However, intelligence was not only concerned with the production or dissemination of knowledge; intelligence could also take on a spiritual meaning. In his paper Dr. Richard Noakes (University of Exeter) will revisit the role of telegraphy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinking about ‘occult’ forms of communication such as clairvoyance and telepathy. These widespread debates on the ‘occult’ exemplify the processes of cultural appropriation of telegraphy as a medium of transcendence and production of occult or spiritual knowledge. Each of these papers will contribute to creating a more nuanced picture of the use and appropriation of telegraphic technology in shaping the myriad meanings of intelligence.