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Who really said it

The Telegraph is Like a Very, Very Long Cat (or Dog)

Not Albert Einstein — an anonymous joke that predates his birth Unknown Anonymous newspaper joke · in circulation by 1866
Disputed Free to reuse

There is no evidence Einstein said this. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the joke to an anonymous newspaper item of August 1866 — two French peasants and “an immense long dog—so long that its head is at Vienna and its tail is at Paris” — printed thirteen years before Einstein was born. The animal became a cat, and the punchline gained the wireless twist the Einstein version turns on, in the Commercial Telegraphers Journal of April 1924, where the teller is a “Jack” McCloskey and Einstein is not mentioned. The earliest text QI has found attaching Einstein’s name is a Usenet posting of 28 February 1985 carrying the source code of the Unix fortune program.

Last verified 1 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The Telegraph is Like a Very, Very Long Cat (or Dog)” Not Albert Einstein. An anonymous joke: the telegraph as a very long animal is documented from August 1866 (with a dog), and the cat version appears in the Commercial Telegraphers Journal, April 1924. Einstein’s name was attached no earlier than a 1985 Unix "fortune" file. · Verbatim: “Well, if you had a very long cat, reaching from New York to Albany, and you trod on its tail in New York, it would throw out a wail in Albany. That’s telegraphy; and wireless is precisely the same thing without the cat.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Albert Einstein. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

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In context

Evoking the themes of knowledge, simplicity and creativity. Theme: "The Telegraph is Like a Very, Very Long Cat (or Dog)". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The Telegraph is Like a Very, Very Long Cat (or Dog)". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Origin
Anonymous newspaper joke, in circulation by 1866
Earliest cat version
Commercial Telegraphers Journal, April 1924
Earliest Einstein credit
Usenet posting of the Unix ‘fortune’ program, 28 February 1985
Wikiquote
Listed in the Misattributed section of the Albert Einstein page

“Jack” McCloskey was overheard explaining wireless to a bunch of the boys. Said Jack: “Well, if you had a very long cat, reaching from New York to Albany, and you trod on its tail in New York, it would throw out a wail in Albany. That’s telegraphy; and wireless is precisely the same thing without the cat.” Commercial Telegraphers Journal, April 1924

The earliest known version with a cat rather than a dog, and the earliest carrying the ‘without the cat’ punchline the Einstein telling depends on. Einstein is not mentioned in it.

Quote Investigator — the 1866 to 1985 chain

How we verified this

  • The earliest known telling is an unsigned newspaper filler, A Novel Illustration of the Telegraph, carried by several American papers in August 1866 — the Providence Evening Press of 31 August 1866 among them. Two French peasants argue about the war between Austria and Prussia, and one explains: “Imagine that the telegraph is an immense long dog—so long that its head is at Vienna and its tail is at Paris” the full chain ↗.
  • The joke was retold for decades with a shifting cast. A diary entry dated 26 July 1873, published in Augustus J. C. Hare’s Story of My Life in 1901, has Lord Stanhope explaining the telegraph to the Shah of Persia with “an immense dog, so big that his tail is in London while his head is in Teheran” the citation ↗.
  • The joke already had a famous-scientist teller, and it was not Einstein. In Edison: His Life and Inventions (1910), Thomas Edison recalls that the best explanation of the telegraph he ever got came from “an old Scotch line repairer” who said “that if you had a dog like a dachshund, long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London” the full text at Project Gutenberg ↗.
  • Wikiquote lists the cat wording in the Misattributed section of its Albert Einstein page, noting that no reference has been found citing a source in Einstein’s own writings the Wikiquote entry ↗.
Public domain

Free to reuse — with one caveat. Everything quoted on this page is a pre-1931 American publication: the August 1866 newspaper item, the April 1924 Commercial Telegraphers Journal passage and the 1910 Edison biography are all in the public domain in the United States and may be reproduced in full. What is not covered is the modern Einstein-attributed wording about “a very, very long cat”, which surfaces no earlier than 1985 and has no established author. This is not legal advice.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

This is a fabricated attribution rather than a misquotation: the joke is real and old, and Einstein simply has nothing to do with it.

Albert Einstein no source

No letter, essay, interview or transcript of Einstein’s contains it. The earliest text linking him to the joke is a Usenet posting of the Unix fortune program dated 28 February 1985, which prefaces the passage with “Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied:” the citation ↗.

A Unix ‘fortune’ file context

The attribution entered circulation inside distributed software, not print. A saying in a fortune database is copied with every installation, which is an efficient way for an unsourced credit to become ubiquitous without anyone ever checking it the 1985 posting ↗.

A dog first, a cat much later drifted

From 1866 to at least 1925 the joke is told with a dog; a horse appears in a Russian variant. The cat arrives in April 1924, and only then does the punchline become “precisely the same thing without the cat” the chain ↗.

Thomas Edison earlier, not the origin

Edison recounted the dachshund version in Edison: His Life and Inventions (1910), crediting it to an old Scottish line repairer he had known as a boy. He told the joke; he did not claim to have made it up the passage ↗.

An anonymous newspaper joke from August 1866, told with a dog; the cat arrives in April 1924, and Einstein’s name no earlier than 1985 the evidence ↗.

Context

Why it sticks to him

The joke works because it does something Einstein was genuinely famous for: it explains an invisible physical process with a picture a child could hold. That is the whole reason the attribution is plausible, and the whole reason it is worth checking.

What the record actually shows is a joke passed anonymously between newspapers, telegraph-trade journals and after-dinner speakers for well over half a century, acquiring a wireless punchline along the way. It never needed a famous author. It got one when a saying-database needed a name to put above it.

The joke is older than Einstein. His name is younger than Unix.

The joke’s route from 1866 to Einstein

August 1866: an anonymous newspaper filler about two French peasants — an immense long dog, head at Vienna, tail at Paris. The earliest known instance.

1873: a diary entry (published 1901) applies it to the Shah of Persia, with the dog stretched from London to Teheran.

1877 and 1885: American dialect versions connect Brooklyn to Hoboken, then New York to Pennsylvania.

1910: Thomas Edison recalls the dachshund version from Edinburgh to London, learned from a line repairer.

1917: the wireless punchline appears — the same, except the dog is imaginary. Still a dog.

April 1924: the first cat, in the Commercial Telegraphers Journal. Einstein is not mentioned.

28 February 1985: a Usenet posting of the Unix fortune program prints the passage above the words “Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied”.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: The Telegraph is Like a Very, Very Long Cat (or Dog)quoteinvestigator.com

The complete citation chain, from the anonymous 1866 dog version through the 1924 cat version to the 1985 Unix fortune file that first names Einstein.
Albert Einstein — Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote files the cat wording under Misattributed and records that no source in Einstein’s own writings has been found.
Edison: His Life and Inventions (1910)gutenberg.org

Dyer and Martin’s biography, where Edison tells the dachshund version of the same joke — full text, free.
Albert Einsteinen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the physicist the joke is pinned on, with his dates and career.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Einstein

Albert Einstein

1879–1955 · German-born theoretical physicist

Albert Einstein is the internet’s most dependable magnet for orphaned cleverness: a remark that sounds at once folksy and scientific drifts toward him sooner or later. This one had an unusually clean route in. It appears in a Unix fortune file — a database of sayings shipped with an operating system — where an attribution once typed is copied forward indefinitely and almost never questioned.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Anonymous, in circulation by 1866

“A Novel Illustration of the Telegraph.” Providence Evening Press (Providence, RI), 31 August 1866, page 2, column 2. Earliest cat version: “Headquarters Notes,” Commercial Telegraphers Journal 22, no. 4 (April 1924): 143.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The Telegraph is Like a Very, Very Long Cat (or Dog)’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-telegraph-is-like-a-very-very-long-cat-or-dog/

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