Reuter, Paul Julius, Freiherr Von

Paul Julius, baron von Reuter, original name Israel Beer Josaphat, (born July 21, 1816, Kassel, Electorate of Hesse [Germany]—died Feb. 25, 1899, Nice, France), German-born founder of one of the first news agencies, which still bears his name. Of Jewish parentage, he became a Christian in 1844 and adopted the name of Reuter.

As a clerk in his uncle’s bank in Göttingen, Ger., Reuter made the acquaintance of the eminent mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss, who was at that time experimenting with the electric telegraph that was to become important in news dissemination.

In the early 1840s he joined a small publishing concern in Berlin. After publishing a number of political pamphlets that aroused the hostility of the authorities, he moved to Paris in 1848, a year of revolution throughout Europe. He began translating extracts from articles and commercial news and sending them to papers in Germany. In 1850 he set up a carrier-pigeon service between Aachen and Brussels, the terminal points of the German and the French-Belgian telegraph lines.

Moving to England in 1851, Reuter opened a telegraph office near the London stock exchange. At first his business was confined mostly to commercial telegrams, but, with daily newspapers flourishing, he persuaded several publishers to subscribe to his service. His first spectacular success came in 1859 when he transmitted to London the text of a speech by Napoleon III foreshadowing the Austro-French Piedmontese war in Italy.

The spread of undersea cables helped Reuter extend his service to other continents. After several years of competition, Reuter and two rival services, Havas of France and Wolff of Germany, agreed on a geographic division of territory, leaving Havas and Wolff their respective countries, parts of Europe, and South America. The three agencies held a virtual monopoly on world press services for many years.

Reuter was created a baron by the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1871 and later was given the privileges of this rank in England. He retired as managing director of Reuters in 1878.