[GreenKeys] Where was the "Telegraph" in AT&T?

[Jim Haynes]

On Tue, 4 Feb 2025, David Breneman via GreenKeys wrote:

> On Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 09:33:37 PM PST, Jeffrey Golas
> <jeffg at junknet.net> wrote:
> 
> This is also an excellent book (The Story of Telecommunications by George P
> Oslin).
> The author was head of public relations for Western Union for 35 years. 

Yes, a must read book.  But it could have used a better editor.  The
publisher Mercer University Press mainly publishes religious books, so
I guess can't be blamed for the faults of this one.

The first third of the book is a mess, describing all the little startup
telegraph companies and their competition and ethical loosesness.  The
middle of the book covers mostly the lifetime of the Western Union
companhy and is excellent.  The final third of the book attempts to
chronicle what happened in the industry after the Bell System breakup
and the downfall of W.U. and it is just too chaotic for those of us
who have lived through it.

An important companion to the above is "The telegraph : a history of
Morse's invention and its predecessors in the U.S." by Lewis Coe.
While this covers some of the same subject matter as Oslin it is told
more from the perspective of Postal Telegraph Co.  The American
telegrapher : a social history 1860-1900 by Edwin Gabler is a history
of the labor movement in telegraphy but is full of entertaining stories. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

 	---

 	"Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
 	"No it ain't! No it ain't!  But ya gotta know the territory."
 		Meredith Willson, The Music Man