By Atlantic Telegraph!

Augusta, Maine
1858

When the transatlantic cable was finally pulled ashore in 1858, celebrations erupted across the nation, marked by the ringing of church bells, torch-light parades, and a hundred-gun salute in New York City. For some it may have seemed like only yesterday, when in 1844, inventor Samuel Morse demonstrated that signals could be transmitted by wire. However, the technology, which allowed people to communicate almost instantly across great distances, had already transformed society. By the early 1850s, there were 20,000 miles of cable crisscrossing the country, prompting financier Cyrus W. Field to undertake the next step, establishing the Atlantic Telegraph Company to connect North America to Europe.

On the Road

1885-1897

The tongue-in-cheek advertisement on the trade card shown above depicts a pompous gentleman declaring, “Yes Miss, when traveling, I always drink Van Houten’s Cocoa. It is so sustaining.” This comic scene takes place in the 1880s, a period when the railroads were changing the social landscape, bringing strangers together in social settings far from their communities.1 The expansion of rail mileage after the Civil War also facilitated industrial growth, causing the rise of a new breed of traveling salesmen called “drummers,” an Americanism whose origins remain obscure.