Juan Monroy — Class 3, Telegraph

A. Old Media New Again
1. Telegraph
  - revolutionary technology
  - shows what technology could be…
  - rearrange time/space
2. Telephone
  - utility technology
  - warning about what technology could become…
  - monopoly control
B. The telegraph shows what technology could be…
1. Optical Telegraphy
  - communication by sight
  - line of sight
  - Optical Telegraphy Lives at the Vatican
  - Code
2. Heliograph
  - helios: sun
  - line-of-sight
  - code
3. Flag Semaphore
  - visual signals
  - ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore
  - alphabetic codes
4. Chappe’s Telegraph
  - Claude Chappe
  - 1793–1850s
  - semaphore arms
  - messages could be sent between 5–10 minutes
5. Electromagnetic Telegraph
  - Samuel Morse
  - electromagnetism, Michael Faraday
  - received Congressional appropriate of $10,000, 1843
6. Morse Code
  - bits: dot-dash
  - alphabet bytes: sets of dots-dash
  - transcribed on paper
7. “What Hath God Wrought” (1844)
  - May 24, 1844
  - first message sent between Morse and Alfred Vail
  - Washington, DC to Baltimore
  - 40-mile connection
  - used over B&O railroad right-of-way
8. Telegraphs in the United States
  - Morse sold and licensed telegraph
  - telegraph network grew
  - Washington to New York, 1846
  - Western Union Telegraph Company formed 1856
9. annihilation of space and time
  - Standard Time
    - organized time
  - Commodities Exchange
    - standardized prices across vast regions
10. Transatlantic Cable
  - Cyrus Field
  - undersea wire, 1858
  - Gutta-Percha insulation
  - William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
  - Anglo-American Telegraph Company, 1866
11. Worldwide Telegraph Network
12. Telegrams
  - telegraph office
  - transcribed
  - transmitted as code
  - relay
  - received as code
  - transcribed
  - delivered by messenger
Disruptions - Local vs. Global Communities - Commerce and Exchange - Newspapers - Personal Identities
1. Telegraph and Internet
  - Binary Digits
  - Relay Routing
  - Morse and ASCII
  - Telegraph Disruptor