1.6 What Hath God Wrought?
Steam engines and rudimentary motors could only get us so far. We needed electricity to really jump-start the communications revolution. Pioneers such as Samuel Morse, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi, and Philo Farnsworth all played roles in bringing electric technology to communications and modern media.
Photo by Rauantiques, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Before the electric light bulb took center stage at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, there was a New England painter-turned-inventor who would change the world in 1844. While studying painting in Europe, Samuel Morse heard about “electromagnets” and how they could send electrical currents through wires. Although he struggled as a painter, his interest in electricity would lead him to develop the first commercial, long-distance telegraph. His test transmission from Baltimore, Maryland, to Washington, DC—more than 50 miles—arrived instantly.
His first test message, “What hath God wrought?” was sent via Morse code (a series of dots and dashes), zipping along the wires. What indeed. For the transmission of information through wires and electricity would transform the exchange of written information from the speed of a newsboy, a Pony Express rider, or a steam-powered locomotive—to information moving at the speed of light (even if it was just one character at a time).
“Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code (bearing his name) that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines. In 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland; by 1866, a telegraph line had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. to Europe. Although the telegraph had fallen out of widespread use by the start of the 21st century, replaced by the telephone, fax machine and Internet, it laid the groundwork for the communications revolution that led to those later innovations.”1
As telegraph wires began connecting distant cities and towns, communication began to bring these growing cities together. News stories, election results, sports, and business updates could happen in New York, and be printed and sold in papers in Chicago or Detroit later that afternoon. Literacy rates increased, and the urban population grew in both number and influence. Access to information fueled this growth alongside the economic expansion and the creation of a brand new segment of society: middle-class consumers.