The Train and the Telegraph

The Train and the Telegraph is an important contribution to our understanding of how new technologies are adopted. In this case, how telegraphs were adopted and used by the railroads. Benjamin Sidney Michael Schwantes begins by explaining why British railway officials quickly adopted the telegraph, especially compared with their American counterparts. While the goals of telegraph officials made some difference in the use of telegraphs to manage traffic on railroads, it was the scale and capitalization of early railroad systems that mattered most. And these factors would continue to make a difference in how early and extensively American railroad officials adopted the telegraph. The value of telegraphy became clear to railroad officials during the Civil War, but only large roads such as the Pennsylvania and the Erie had the resources to expand or develop their own telegraph systems. Smaller railroads had to rely on commercial telegraph lines, notably those controlled by Western Union Telegraph, the dominant company after the war. Because train orders were not given priority by telegraph companies, most railroads adopted what became known as the “American system,” which used telegraphs to supplement rather than supplant traditional time- and rule-based operating procedures

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• Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influence 2023

  James Evans, Tyler Reigeluth et al.•Isis•2023

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