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An innovative and timely examination of the concept of solitude in nineteenth-century American literature During the nineteenth century, the United States saw radical developments in media and communication that reshaped concepts of spatiality and temporality. As the telegraph, the postal system, and public transportation became commonplace, the country achieved a level of connectedness that was never possible before. At this level, physical isolation no longer equaled psychological separation from the exterior world, and as communication networks proliferated, being disconnected took on negative cultural connotations. Though solitude, and the lack thereof, is a pressing concern in today’s...
"This study also explores the surprising parallels between the telegraphy of the nineteenth century and the work of women in technical fields today. The telegrapher's work, like that of the modern computer programmer, involved translating written language into machine-readable code. And anticipating the Internet by over one hundred years, telegraphers often experienced the gender-neutral aspect of the "cyberspace" they inhabited."--BOOK JACKET.
The nineteenth century saw not only the emergence of the telegraph, the telephone, and the typewriter but also a fascination with séances and occult practices like automatic writing as a means for contacting the dead. Like the new technologies, modern spiritualism promised to link people separated by space or circumstance; and like them as well, it depended on the presence of a human medium to convey these conversations. Whether electrical or otherworldly, these communications were remarkably often conducted—in offices, at telegraph stations and telephone switchboards, and in séance parlors—by women. In The Sympathetic Medium, Jill Galvan offers a richly nuanced and culturally grounded...
A revealing insight into the links between globalization and the technological advances in communication brought about by the telegraph network.
The history of information is a rapidly emerging new subfield of history. Historians are identifying the issues they need to examine, crafting novel research agendas, and locating research materials relevant to their work. Like the larger world around them, historians are discovering what it means to live and work in a world that increasingly sees itself as an information society. Long a discussion point among sociologists, economists, political leaders, and media experts, historians are integrating their methods and research into the larger conversation. The purpose of this book is to advocate for a way to look at the history of information and to history as a whole that is simultaneously r...
Before the widespread popularity of automobiles, buses, and trucks, freight and passenger trains bound the nation together. The Station Agent and the American Railroad Experience explores the role of local frontline workers that kept the country's vast rail network running. Virtually every community with a railroad connection had a depot and an agent. These men and occasionally women became the official representatives of their companies and were highly respected. They met the public when they sold tickets, planned travel itineraries, and reported freight and express shipments. Additionally, their first-hand knowledge of Morse code made them the most informed in town. But as times changed, so did the role of, and the need for, the station agent. Beautifully illustrated with dozens of vintage photographs, The Station Agent and the American Railroad Experience, brings back to life the day-to-day experience of the station agent and captures the evolution of railroad operations as technology advanced.
Telegraphies reveals a body of literature in which Americans of all ranks imagine how nineteenth-century telecommunications technologies forever alter the way Americans speak, write, form community, and conceive of the divine.
"Do not think of the Pennsylvania Railroad as a business enterprise," Forbes magazine informed its readers in May 1936. "Think of it as a nation." At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business corporation in the world. In 1914, the PRR employed more than two hundred thousand people—more than double the number of soldiers in the United States Army. As the self-proclaimed "Standard Railroad of the World," this colossal corporate body underwrote American industrial expansion and shaped the economic, political, and social environment of the United States. In turn, the PRR was fundamentally shaped by the American landscape, adapting to ...
How did the telegraph, a new and revolutionary form of communication, affect diplomats, who tended to resist change? In a study based on impressive multinational research, David Paull Nickles examines the critical impact of the telegraph on the diplomacy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Case studies in crisis diplomacy--the War of 1812, the Trent affair during the U.S. Civil War, and the famous 1917 Zimmermann telegram--introduce wide-ranging thematic discussions on the autonomy of diplomats; the effects of increased speed on decision making and public opinion; the neglected role of clerks in diplomacy; and the issues of expense, garbled text, espionage, and technophobia that...
"This anthology of original historical essays examines how social relations are enacted in and through computing using the twin frameworks of abstraction and embodiment. The book highlights a wide range of understudied contexts and experiences, such as computing and disability, working mothers as technical innovators, race and community formation, and gaming behind the Iron Curtain"--