Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Telegraph
The telegraph was an even more dramatic innovation in its day than the Internet
On May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse, a professor at the University of the City of New York, was seated in the chambers of the U.S.
Despite all the recent talk, governments will never be much good at fostering new technologies.
In May of 1927, a secretary rushed into her boss’ office shouting, “He did it! He did it! Lindbergh has landed in Paris!” The boss was unimpressed. “Don’t you understand?” she asked. “Lindbergh has flown the Atlantic all by himself.”
In 1820, their daily existence was practically medieval; 30 later, many of them were living the modern life.
It is a commonplace that the American Revolution determined the political destiny of the country. Far less noted is the fact that the revolution’s consequences, profound as they were, had little, if any, impact on the daily existence of most Americans.
The urge to move documents as fast as possible has always been a national preoccupation because it has always been a necessity. Faxes and Federal Express are just the latest among many innovations for getting the message across.
Reaching out and touching someone hasn’t always been easy—especially if it was necessary to hand that person something in the process.
Late in 1876, William Orton, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, rejected an opportunity to purchase from Alexander Graham Bell and his associates all patents relating to Bell’s telephone for $100,000.
Incidents in history are usually significant only in combination with a succession of other incidents. Isolated incidents can assume importance only when they summarize an epoch in one dramatic moment or when fuller knowledge of the event might alter interpretations.
When did we start saying it? And why?
FROM THE OIL FIELDS of Indonesia to the tulip fields of Holland to the rice fields of Brazil, a traveler overhears conversations sounding something like this:
As Lincoln lay dying from an assassin’s bullet across the street from Ford’s Theatre through the grim night of April 14, 1865, frequent bulletins on his sinking condition clicked between the major American cities along the country’s spreading web of Morse tel
The making and breaking of codes and ciphers has played an exciting and often crucial part in American history
By choice, cryptographers are an unsung and anonymous lot. In war and peace they labor in their black chambers, behind barred doors, dispatching sheets of secret symbols and reading encoded messages from the innermost councils of foreign governments.
Early in his military career, the apostle of air power blazed a trail through the wilderness, forging the last link in a telegraph line to the edge of the Bering Sea
It took a decade of effort, heart-breaking disappointments, and the largest ship afloat before Cyrus Field could lay a successful cable across the Atlantic
Cyrus West Field was one of the greatest Americans of the nineteenth century, but today there can be few of his countrymen who remember him.
In February 1837, Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury called for information from the “most intelligent sources” to help prepare a report to Congress on the propriety of establishing a “system of telegraphs” for the United States.
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