Why Wire Mattered: Building U.S. Networked Infrastructures, 1845–1910

Histories of technology, communications, or infrastructure typically draw few distinctions between the telegraph machine and its network. Yet that vast wired infrastructure not only made telegraph machines socially useful, it established a material foundation for telephone- and electrical-service networks. This article emphasizes American telegraph-network development and argues that the telegraph's needs catalyzed an electrical-wire supply industry with important continuities for later wired-network technologies. This study also shows that when telegraph networks emerged in the mid-1800s, industrial constraints meant the best wire available was still abjectly deficient for network needs. Wire vexed telegraph-line builders everywhere, but especially in the United States, where promoters favored less expensive but more vulnerable overhead lines. This article demonstrates that successfully networking the American nation involved decades of building and rebuilding, hundreds of mechanical inventions, hard-won industrial advances, and considerable individual sacrifice.