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Entry 188 of 240Invention

The Telegraph

1844 CE/North America/United States
Today The United States, then worldwideSpan Telegraph era · 1844 onward

Samuel Morse's electric telegraph sent messages down a wire at the speed of electricity, severing information from physical transport for the first time in history — news that once travelled at the pace of a galloping horse now crossed a continent in minutes. Within decades, cables under the oceans wired the world into a single nervous system. It was the leap the printing press began and the internet would complete: each one reordering who knows what, and when.

◆ Worth knowingThe first message Morse sent over his telegraph asked, 'What hath God wrought?' — and the technology was so alien that some early users assumed their words physically travelled down the wire in tiny envelopes.
◆ The mechanismInformation-medium revolution

A new way to record or transmit information lowers the cost of copying ideas and reorders who holds knowledge and power.

Also: Trade-route shift

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