Wires
1830 – 1900. Communication detaches from physical transport. Telegraph wires cross continents in days, then oceans. The telephone arrives. The undersea cable shrinks the world from months to minutes. By 1900, Marconi proves the wire itself was optional.
Part of Media
18 moments in this segment.
- — Morse, Vail, and the Electric Telegraph. Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail patent a single-wire telegraph using on/off pulses of current. In 1844 Morse sends "What hath God wrought" from the U.S. Capitol to Baltimore. Within twenty years 23,000 miles of telegraph line cross the United States.
- — Morse, Vail, and the Electric Telegraph. Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrate their electric telegraph, and in 1844 send the first public message — "What hath God wrought" — from Washington to Baltimore. Morse code turns language into dots and dashes, collapsing the time it takes news to cross a continent from days to seconds for the first time in history.
- — First Transatlantic Cable. The first transatlantic telegraph cable is completed in August 1858, letting Queen Victoria and President Buchanan exchange greetings in hours rather than the weeks a ship took. It failed within a month, but a durable cable laid by the Great Eastern in 1866 permanently wired the two continents together.
- — Bell's Telephone. Alexander Graham Bell, three days after his patent grants, transmits "Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you" to his assistant Thomas Watson through a wire in his Boston laboratory. By 1881 every major American city has telephone exchanges. The handset will replace the telegram within a generation.
- — Bell's Telephone. Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone on 7 March 1876 and, days later, speaks the first words down a wire to his assistant: "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." Point-to-point voice communication begins, and within decades the telephone network becomes the largest machine humanity has ever built.
- — Edison’s phonograph. recorded and replayed sound for the first time — the birth of recorded media.
- — Hertz Generates Electromagnetic Waves. Heinrich Hertz, working in his Karlsruhe lab, generates and detects radio-frequency electromagnetic waves — confirming Maxwell's 1865 equations experimentally. Asked the practical application, Hertz replies: "It's of no use whatsoever." He dies in 1894 at 36.
- — Edison’s Kinetoscope. Edison and Dickson’s Kinetoscope let one viewer watch moving pictures — a step toward cinema.
- — Lumière Brothers — Cinematograph. On December 28, 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière show the first commercial film screening at the Salon Indien du Grand Café, Boulevard des Capucines, Paris. Ten short films, 33 paying spectators. Within a year the Cinematograph is touring Bombay, Buenos Aires, and Moscow.
- — Lumière Brothers — Cinematograph. On 28 December 1895 the Lumière brothers hold the first commercial film screening in a Paris café, including "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory." Their Cinématographe camera-projector turns moving pictures into a public, ticketed medium — the birth of cinema as a mass art form.
- — Marconi Patents Wireless Telegraphy. Guglielmo Marconi, 22, files British Patent 12039 — "Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses and Signals" — describing the first practical wireless telegraph. By 1901 he transmits the letter "S" across the Atlantic from Poldhu, Cornwall to St. John's, Newfoundland. Hertz's "no use whatsoever" becomes a global industry.
- — Marconi Patents Wireless Telegraphy. Guglielmo Marconi patents wireless telegraphy in 1896 and in 1901 receives the first transatlantic radio signal — the letter "S" — across 3,500 km of ocean. Messages no longer need a wire, freeing communication from cables and making ship-to-shore contact possible.
- — The telephone network spreads. Switchboards and exchanges turned Bell’s invention into a networked communication system. This photograph dates from 1975.
- — First Transatlantic Cable. Cyrus West Field's Anglo-American Telegraph Company lands the first transatlantic submarine cable between Valentia, Ireland and Heart's Content, Newfoundland. Queen Victoria messages President Buchanan on August 16. The cable fails within weeks but the principle is proven; a working cable is laid in 1866. The subject dates from 1858; this photograph was taken in 2005.
- — Reuters & the news wire. Telegraph-fed news agencies like Reuters made news a global, near-instant commodity. The subject dates from 1851; this photograph was taken in 2009.
- — The gramophone & the record. Berliner’s flat disc made recorded sound a mass-produced, mass-distributed product. The subject dates from 1887; this photograph was taken in 2010.
- — Kodak & the snapshot. George Eastman’s Kodak put photography in everyone’s hands — "you press the button, we do the rest". The subject dates from 1888; this photograph was taken in 2014.
- — The typewriter. mechanised personal and office writing and shaped the modern keyboard. The subject dates from 1874; this photograph was taken in 2018.
