Advances+in+Communication

In the transition from an agricultural America to an Industrial one, there were many advances in communication that affected the trade of America, social life of the citizens, governance of America, and the conveyance of messages. On this wiki page I will talk about how these advances affected America and the world.

1. How was Morse code beneficial to other people besides government officials and armies?

Railroads played a crucial role in the development of the telegraph; they let telegraph companies set up cables under the tracks and they used the telegraph to control the traffic of the trains, because during that time period trains went one way or another on the same track, the telegraph prevented head on collisions and rear end collisions.

2. Did people get addicted to the telegraph like we do to text messaging?

Yes, it was the businessman's main way of communicating in this widespread industry. The telegraph was more significant to the Industrial Revolution culture than the telephone was. The telephone ranked 2nd to the telegraph. The telegraph was used widely among railroad systems which made it faster to transport raw materials, which in turn decreased the amount of time it took to make a textile, making it easier to get products (refined goods). Railroads made it easier to bring food from farms into industrialized cities.

3. How often did they use telegraphy?

The telegraph became the central form of communication for businesses. Before the introduction of the telegraph, messengers were used to convey messages it now took minutes rather than months for a message to reach a faraway destination using the telegraph. With the telegraph the message was accurate because people were trained to translate the message and it was all written down.

4. How much did the telegraph cost and was it affordable to all social classes?

The construction of the cables that connected Baltimore and Washington was $30,000.

5. Did only the upper-middle class/businesses have telephones?

No anyone who could afford a telephone had one. Most people had telephones because they weren't difficult to operate, all you had to do was speak, and they connected them with the rest of the world.

6. What are some of the necessary preconditions for technological innovations to advance an economy?

First you have to have an idea. Create formulas and plans to create the technology you want to create. Next come the prototypes. Then once you have a solid invention, you need a patent. You find a sponsor/investor. Once you find an investor you make more of your product and share it with the public. Advertise. Overall the piece of technology has to be usable, wanted by the community, and must make the economy better, mainly financially.

7. How do these advances in communication change the path of business and the Industrial Revolution?

These technological advances in communication made the world seem smaller, because it took only a matter of seconds to send a message across a country or over seas. These advances afforded businesses the opportunity to buy raw materials, take orders, take advantage of new opportunities, find ways to respond to far away mayhem, and make it easier to control business when physically out of reach.

8. How and why did each of these advances in communication lead to each other?

Thoughts of both the telegraph and telephone were around centuries before the Industrial Revolution, so the idea of who originally was the inventor makes it difficult to give a definite answer. All advances in communication started with electricity. Ideas as to what electricity is can be traced back to 600 B.C.E., when Greeks rubbed amber against fur cloth and observed that it caused straw to cling to the cloth (static electricity). When Benjamin Franklin made the correlation between lightning and electricity and when Alessandro Volta created the first battery and observed that electricity flowed through two wires attached to it. All of these discoveries and forms of electricity were building blocks for the steam engine which uses steam, turbines, armature, and a large magnets (electromagnets). F.B Morse's improvement of the telegraph "consisted of an energy source (a battery), an electromagnet, and an electric switch known as a key. The key came in contact with the metal plate beneath it, an electric current (path) was completed. Electricity flowed out of the telegraph, into external electrical wires, and to waiting receivers. As the current came into the receiver, it cause the magnet to pull down a device that made a clicking sound (or punched a hole into a strip of paper)." Morse mad a code called Morse Code comprised of "longer and shorter bursts of electricity created by tapping on the key". People were taught to translate these codes. The telegraph afforded businessmen new opportunities and the ability to spread up retrieval and/or sending of raw materials and the receiving and/or sending of refined goods. The telegraph also changed the way newspapers were written. Next, the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, a school teacher of the deaf. The telephones sold by Bell Company sold 230 telephones in its first year, he sold most of them to Edwin T. Holmes's burglar alarm company, he was the first person to have a home telephone. The telephone didn’t become popular until the 1900's.

9. How were these technologies distributed?

By 1846 the telegraph lines had sprouted across the United States. By 1851 there were over fifty private telegraph companies. In 1856 these companies merged to form the Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1861 a telegraph line that went across the entire United States was completed. In 1866 a submarine cable was laid down on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, connecting North America with Great Britain using quadruplex telegraphy. The Bell Company was Alexander Graham Bell's company that manufactured and distributed telephones to over 150,000 Americans. It only truly became popular, in the 1900's, about the time when Bell's patent expired, 1893. "J.P. Morgan bought the Bell Company, now called American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T). By World War I, AT&T had a virtual monopoly." . Advertisement for Bell's Telephone; Western Electric (1941)

10. How did these advances in communication affect any other communication tools already put in place?

The telegraph put and end to the Pony Express when the cable to California was finished. The railroad system also put an end to the Pony Express because the train was much "faster, reliable and safer"

Primary Source

In my primary source Mr Morse is petitioning the government for $30,000 to implant cables throught the United States; from Baltimore to Maryland, for his telegraph. Many people are against it but no one more than Cave Johnson. Mr. Johnson despised the invention but ultimately became head of putting the inventions cables into place once the money as given.

Bibliography

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