Suddenly the West leaped into great prosperity. And long
centuries of economic and social development were spanned within
a few decades.
CHAPTER VI. AGENTS OF COMMUNICATION
Communication is one of man's primal needs. There was indeed a
time when no formula of language existed, when men communicated
with each other by means of gestures, grimaces, guttural sounds,
or rude images of things seen; but it is impossible to conceive
of a time when men had no means of communication at all. And at
last, after long ages, men evolved in sound the names of the
things they knew and the forms of speech; ages later, the
alphabet and the art of writing; ages later still, those
wonderful instruments of extension for the written and spoken
word: the telegraph, the telephone, the modern printing press,
the phonograph, the typewriter, and the camera.
The word "telegraph" is derived from Greek and means "to write
far"; so it is a very exact word, for to write far is precisely
what we do when we send a telegram. The word today, used as a
noun, denotes the system of wires with stations and operators and
messengers, girdling the earth and reaching into every civilized
community, whereby news is carried swiftly by electricity. But
the word was coined long before it was discovered that
intelligence could be communicated by electricity.
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