What are the determinants of the expansion of the telegraph in the 19th century? State sponsored technological extension has been recently associated with higher state capacity. However, there's limited evidence on the determinants of the expansion of technological adoption when the state is the main driver of it. The telegraph contributed to the immediate communication between state officials, without them having to physically move to communicate. Seen from this perspective in which the telegraph is part of the infrastructural power of the State, how can its uneven development be explained? Why policymakers decided to place telegraph stations in some places and not in others? I explore this question using newly digitized data from Sweden in 1865. The first hypothesis is that the preferences of the economic elites increased the likelihood of adopting the telegraph. The second hypothesis is that the emergence of labour movement and political unrest increased the likelihood of adopting the telegraph. To test these hypotheses, I operationalize the preferences of the burgeoise with population density for each of the 2400 swedish municipalities. To test whether labour conflict led to more telegraph, I use geocoded data on labour conflicts from 1865- 1888 in Sweden. Preliminary results show that population density had a huge effect on the likelihood of adopting the telegraph, whereas conflict didn't. This aligns with modernization theory - rather than political repression from extractive elites - as the main driver of state sponsored technology.