Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Communication and Technology, 1850-1950

Telegraph Messenger Boysprovides an entirely new perspective on the telegraph system, a communications network that revolutionized human perceptions of time and space. The book also tells a broader story of human interaction with technology, and social and cultural changes brought about by this relationship. Downey argues that the telegraph network was not merely an electromechanical system but a labor system as well. An army of uniformed boys worked for the telegraph companies, linking ordinary human labor to our first electronic information system. With a wealth of fascinating observations about the role of youth, labor and cities in creating the nation's first electronic grid, this study draws many useful parallels between this first "internetwork" and the one that is evolving now.