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American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the 19th Century, the telegraph is the cutting edge of communication. No one can imagine anything better—except Alexander Graham Bell.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to American innovations, add free on Amazon music, download
0:06.0	the app today.
0:10.0	It's October 1832, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
0:22.8	Two man aboard a ship bound from France to New York City, steal themselves against
0:27.5	a wicked storm.
0:29.2	Their fellow passengers are green-faced and heaving, that these two men barely notice
0:33.9	the boat's climbs and falls.
0:36.5	They're too engrossed in their conversation.
0:39.6	One is a gifted but struggling painter.
0:42.4	The other is a brilliant geologist.
0:45.1	Their conversation about Benjamin Franklin and his experiments with a force called electricity
0:50.3	has wound its way around to the current topic, modern communications technology.
0:56.2	The boat takes a massive lurch and the painter steadies himself against a mantle, unfazed.
1:02.3	A few weeks ago in France, I visited the Semaphore telegraph system, quite an artistic vision
1:08.1	indeed, extending into the countryside as far as the eye can see, and the simplicity of
1:13.3	this system is so elegant.
1:15.6	In the early 1830s, the Semaphore system is the fastest, most reliable way to communicate
1:21.4	a message over long distances.
1:23.7	It consists of a line of towers that stretches for miles, each visible to the next.
1:29.0	They're topped with a vertical post with hinged, horizontal arms extending out that can
1:35.0	be manipulated by an operator into different positions.
1:38.6	Each position corresponds to a code in Semaphore, a visual language for relaying messages from
	...

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