The Communications Revolution: The Telegraph and the Telephone

Science and technology have always played a major role in the development of the United States. The birth of the nation nearly coincided with the first stirrings of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Industrial Revolution helped to transform the United States from a nation of farms and small towns to an industrial power and an urbanized society. Today, technological change is transforming the country again as jobs move away from traditional industries like manufacturing to service industries. People are so used to technology as a fact of everyday life that it can be hard to appreciate how sweeping the changes have been in the United States in a relatively short time.
Throughout most of human history, most messages could travel from place to place only as fast as they could be carried on horseback, by ship, or, by the 19th century, by rail. Then, in the 1830s, Samuel F. B. Morse invented the telegraph, a machine that used electricity...