Wired into Nature: The Telegraph and the North American Frontier

摘要

While the building of the transcontinental railroad across the western United States has been the subject of an impressive number of books, the transcontinental telegraph has received far less attention from scholars. Wired into Nature helps to remedy this relative neglect, as well as the paucity of telegraph histories focused on the western half of the country. Schwoch frames his work mainly within communication studies but also within historical sub-fields such as environmental history and the history of technology. Not only does the book embed the building of the transcon- tinental telegraph in its environmental context, but it also foregrounds use of the telegraph for military strategy (especially in conflicts with American Indians), secrecy and surveillance in weather observing, and telegraph extensions-or, at least, plans for extensions-into other frontier areas with widely varying climates, including Alaska and the Southwest.