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Author Schwantes, Benjamin Sidney Michael, 1978- author.

Title The train and the telegraph : a revisionist history / Benjamin Sidney Michael Schwantes
Published Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2019]

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Description 1 online resource
Series Hagley Library studies in business, technology, and politics
Hagley library studies in business, technology, and politics.
Contents Rights-of-way -- Dangerous expedient -- At war with time and space -- The American system -- The struggle for standards -- Telegraphers and regulators
Summary To many people in the nineteenth century, the railroad and the telegraph were powerful, transformative forces, ones that seemed to work closely together to shape the economy, society, and politics of the United States. However, the perception--both popular and scholarly--of the intrinsic connections between these two institutions has largely obscured a far more complex and contested relationship, one that created profound divisions between entrepreneurial telegraph promoters and warier railroad managers. In The Train and the Telegraph, Benjamin Sidney Michael Schwantes argues that uncertainty, mutual suspicion, and cautious experimentation more aptly describe how railroad officials and telegraph entrepreneurs hesitantly established a business and technical relationship. The two industries, Schwantes reveals, were drawn together gradually through external factors such as war, state and federal safety regulations, and financial necessity, rather than because of any perception that the two industries were naturally related or beneficial to each other. Complicating the existing scholarship by demonstrating that the railroad and telegraph in the United States were uneasy partners at best--and more often outright antagonists--throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, The Train and the Telegraph will appeal to scholars of communication, transportation, and American business history and political economy, as well as to enthusiasts of the nineteenth-century American railroad industry
Notes Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Delaware
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Railroad trains -- United States -- Dispatching -- History -- 19th century
Telegraph -- United States -- History -- 19th century
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Industries -- Media & Communications.
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING -- Telecommunications.
Railroad trains -- Dispatching
Telegraph
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781421429748
1421429748
1421429756
9781421429755
1421429756