Electrical Communication
Technological and engineering breakthroughs occurring in the 19th Century revolutionized even common aspects of life. For instance, a person living 2,000 years ago would communicate with others in virtually the same way as a person living 200 years ago. Communication was achieved either by directly speaking with someone, or by the act of physically writing down whatever was needed. On rare occasion a horn, drum, mirror, or smoke signal would facilitate communication. Still, modes of communication did not significantly change for millennia. This too changed during the 19th Century.
Building upon earlier experiments with electrical impulses, in 1838 Samuel Morse invented a practical version of the telegraph in the United States. By 1844, the technology was able to send signals almost instantaneously over a distance of 40 miles from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore. This was a stunning development, as sending a letter between these two cites would take a horse and carriage half a day to travel the same distance, if the road was good. With the telegraph, the modern era of rapid communication was born.
Communication wonders even greater than the telegraph were just a few years away. Though many contributed to the science involved in the creation of the telephone, the first American patent was issued to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. Just two years later, people in New Haven, Connecticut could buy a telephone and call other subscribers within their city, in a fashion that was fundamentally the same as we do today.
By the end of the century, yet another breakthrough was made in electrical communication, when in 1896 Italian Guglielmo Marconi received a patent for the first commercially viable radio. Just a year later, he established the first radio station in Britain. For the first time in human history, wireless electrical communication was available to anyone with a radio receiver.
Today, electronic and wireless communication is central to modern life. All of the virtually instantaneous communication we enjoy begins not with the advent of computers or satellites in space, but with humble and relatively primitive machines invented before the 20th Century even began.