Masters of Space / Morse and the Telegraph; Thompson and the Cable; Bell and the Telephone; Marconi and the Wireless Telegraph; Carty and the Wireless Telephone

by Walter Kellogg Towers

PROFESSOR BELL'S FIRST TELEPHONE

THE FIRST TELEPHONE SWITCHBOARD USED IN NEW HAVEN, CONN., FOR EIGHT SUBSCRIBERS

EARLY NEW YORK EXCHANGE

PROFESSOR BELL IN SALEM, MASS., AND MR. WATSON IN BOSTON, DEMONSTRATING THE TELEPHONE BEFORE AUDIENCES IN 1877

DOCTOR BELL AT THE TELEPHONE OPENING THE NEW YORK-CHICAGO LINE, OCTOBER 18, 1892

GUGLIELMO MARCONI

A REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN OUTSIDE OF THE CLIFDEN STATION WHILE MESSAGES WERE BEING SENT ACROSS TO CAPE RACE

MARCONI STATION AT CLIFDEN, IRELAND

PREFACE

This is the story of talking at a distance, of sending messages through space. It is the story of great men—Morse, Thomson, Bell, Marconi, and others—and how, with the aid of men like Field, Vail, Catty, Pupin, the scientist, and others in both the technical and commercial fields, they succeeded in flashing both messages and speech around the world, with wires and without wires. It is the story of how the thought of the world has been linked together by those modern wonders of science and of industry—the telegraph, the submarine cable, the telephone, the wireless telegraph, and, most recently, the wireless telephone.