1st Edition

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

By Gregory J. Downey Copyright 2002
    256 Pages 30 Color Illustrations
    by Routledge

    256 Pages 30 Color Illustrations
    by Routledge

    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.

    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

    Biography

    Gregory J. Downey

    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