Wireless, or radio, telegraphy was the
invention of a nineteen-year-old boy, Guglielmo Marconi, an
Italian; but it has been greatly extended and developed at the
hands of four Americans: Fessenden, Alexanderson, Langmuir, and
Lee De Forest. It was De Forest's invention that made possible
transcontinental and transatlantic telephone service, both with
and without wires.
The story of the telegraph's younger brother, and great ally in
communication, the telephone of Alexander Graham Bell, is another
pregnant romance of American invention. But that is a story by
itself, and it begins in a later period and so falls within the
scope of another volume of these Chronicles.*
* "The Age of Big Business", by Burton J. Hendrick, "The
Chronicle of America", vol. XXXIX.
Wise newspapermen stiffened to attention when the telegraph began
ticking. The New York Herald, the Sun, and the Tribune had been
founded only recently and they represented a new type of
journalism, swift, fearless, and energetic. The proprietors of
these newspapers saw that this new instrument was bound to affect
all newspaperdom profoundly. How was the newspaper to cope with
the situation and make use of the news that was coming in and
would be coming in more and more over the wires?
For one thing, the newspapers needed better printing machinery.
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