This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show and our favorite

subject as you know is American history. Nowadays we never have to think about how long a message

might take to get somewhere or to someone. In fact, often if there isn't a near instantaneous

reply, we often get frustrated or even annoyed. If the message is going

from Oxford, Mississippi, or sending to, let's say, Oxford, England, we want it now and we want

it fast. John Steele Gordon, historian and friend of Hillsdale, is here to tell us how the story

of the telegraph and the transatlantic cable

changed the world.

You know, some inventions are more important than others.

I mean, Oscar Hammestine, the first, the great opera impresario was the grandfather of the

lyricist, who was a great inventor too, by the way, but he once invented a reversible necktie so

you could spill gravy on two sides.

And he sold it. He made money on this thing, but this did not change the world.

It had been known for a hundred years that you could send electricity down a wire.

Many very important scientists of the 18th century had investigated this,

including Benjamin Franklin, whose famous experiment with the kite and the key,

prove that lightning is an electrical phenomenon.

If you're tempted to reproduce Franklin's experiment,

I would strongly suggest that you don't.

It was a parlor game until the 19th century when wire became cheap, because wire factories

powered by steam could draw out copper very quickly and efficiently. Before then you had to beat it out.

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