Events Calendar

Sheldon Hochheiser: Rutgers Institute for High School Teachers

Friday, November 14, 2014, 09:00am - 02:30pm

Rutgers Institute for High School Teachers

2014-2015 Seminars

 

Telecommunications in American Society, 1844-1984

Friday, November 14, 2014, 9am—2:30pm
Sheldon Hochheiser, Archivist and Institutional Historian, IEEE History Center at Stevens Institute of Technology

The telegraph and its successor the telephone were the first wide-spread communications media that separated communications from transportation, by sending messages electrically over copper wires. The development and dissemination of these two technologies have helped shape American society, and in turn the evolving particulars of American society have shaped the two technologies.  We will study these events by looking at the key individuals involved, the major companies that dominated these two industries in the United States, and the ways in which these technologies were used and not used by several groups within American society and the American economy. And finally, we will extend the discussion to the rise of the contemporary version of the telephone, the cellphone.

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