Social Implications
Prior to the electrical telegraph, nearly all information was limited to traveling at the speed of a human or animal. The telegraph freed communication from the constraints of space and time and truly affected how Americans lived their lives. In 1870, 9,158,000 messages were handled by the telegraph network in the United States but by 1900 the number had risen to 63,168,000. These numbers indicate the increased frequency of use and the degree of which Americans were quickly accepting the telegraph. The telegraph isolated the message (information) from the physical movement of objects or the process.
Telegraphy facilitated the growth of organizations "in the railroads, consolidated financial and commodity markets, and reduced information costs within and between firms." This immense growth in the business sectors influenced society to embrace the use of telegrams.
Worldwide telegraphy changed the gathering of information for news reporting. Messages and information would now travel far and wide, and the telegraph demanded a language "stripped of the local, the regional; and colloquial," to better facilitate a worldwide media language. Media language had to be standardized, which led to the gradual disappearance of different forms of speech and styles of journalism and storytelling.
Read more about this topic: Telegraphy
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