Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Communication and Technology, 1850-1950

by Gregory J. Downey

Overview

In Telegraph Messenger Boys Gregory J. Downey provides an entirely new perspective on the telegraph system: a communications network that revolutionized human perceptions of time and space. The book goes beyond the advent of the telegraphy and tells a broader story of human interaction with technology and the social and cultural changes it brought about.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415931083
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/15/2002
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 1. Why Telegraph Messenger Boys? 2. Western Union and the Inner-City Messengers 3. American District Telegraph and the Intra-City Messengers 4. The Spaces of Messenger Discipline 5. The Message and the Messenger 6. The Limits of Gender, Class and Age 7. The First Information Internetwork 8. They Myths of Education 9. From Union Joke to Union Man 10. The Telegram is Dead; Long Live the Messenger

Editorial Reviews

Telegraph Messenger Boys offers intriguing analytical approaches for labor historians and is a worthy contribution to communications history.

William S. Pretzer

Henry Ford Museum

Dearborn, Michigan

From the Publisher

'.this book could attract a broad readership. It would certainly become a must-read for graduate students and historians in the variety of fields on which it touches.[Downey's] analysis is original and his framework creative.

Susan Porter Benson