by Tom Wheeler
21. Albert Kapr, Johannes Gutenberg, The Man and His Invention, translated from the German by Douglas Martin (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1996), pp. 75–81.
22. Diana Childress, Johannes Gutenberg and the Printing Press (Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2008), p. 35.
23. Man, Gutenberg, p. 76.
24. Precise terminology might dictate that the term “printing” actually applied to the woodblocks, while Gutenberg developed “typography.” This text, however, sticks with the common description “printing” to refer to the process of transferring ink from raised type to a page.
25. Others had similar ideas about individual letters, but typically they reverted to casting the assembled collection en bloc so that it resembled a print block. See Febvre and Martin, Coming of the Book, p. 31; Man, Gutenberg, pp. 116–19.
26. Nicole Howard, The Book (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 37.
27. Febvre and Martin, Coming of the Book, p. 31.
28. Ibid., p. 35.
29. Man, Gutenberg, p. 136.
30. Childress, Johannes Gutenberg, p. 56.
31. The resulting mixture was 5 percent tin, 80 percent lead, and 15 percent antimony.
32. There have been discovered what appear to be scraps of earlier printing runs, possibly trials, that were reused and pressed to make up hardcover bindings.
33. James Thorpe, The Gutenberg Bible (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library Press, 1999), p. 26.
34. Ibid., p. 29.
35. Eisenstein, Printing Press, p. 49; Febvre and Martin, Coming of the Book, p. 28, Johnson, Later Renaissance, p. 28. If true, this experience did not apparently discourage Fust from returning to Paris with his products. Historical evidence suggests it was in Paris while selling books in 1466 that he succumbed to the plague (Eisenstein, Printing Press, p. 50 n.).
36. Jane Gleeson-White, Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), p. 70.
37. The Renaissance was under way in Northern Italy at the time of Gutenberg’s discovery, and thus printing cannot have “caused” its occurrence, but printing certainly aided its expansion.
38. Eisenstein, Printing Revolution, p. 13.
39. Erwin Panofsky, “Art, Science, Genius: Notes on the ‘Renaissance-Dämmerung,’ ” in The Renaissance: Six Essays, ed. Wallace K. Ferguson (New York: Henry Holt, 1962), p. 128, cited in Eisenstein, Printing Revolution, p. 140.
40. See Gleeson-White, Double Entry.
41. Toby Lester, The Fourth Part of the World (New York: Free Press, 2009), pp. 250–52.
42. Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014), p. 4.
43. See Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (New York: Plume, 2007).
44. Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (University of Toronto Press, 1962), p. 228.
45. Jonathan Sallet, “Technology and Democracy: Dynamic Change and Competition,” Twelfth Annual Aspen Institute Conference on Telecommunications Policy, Competition, Innovation and Investment in Telecommunications, August 11, 1997.
46. Eisenstein, Printing Revolution, p. 83.
47. Benson Bobrick, Wide as the Waters (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), p. 86.
48. Man, Gutenberg, p. 91.
49. Febvre and Martin, Coming of the Book, pp. 244–45.
50. Gertrude Burford Rawlings, The Story of Books (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1901).
51. Ann Blair, “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1 (2003), pp. 11–28.
52. Ibid.
53. James J. O’Donnell, “The Pragmatics of the New: Trithemius, McLuhan, Cassiodorus,” in The Future of the Book, ed. G. Nunberg (University of California Press, 1996).
54. Paul Johnson, The Renaissance: A Short History (New York: Modern Library, 2000), p. 16.
55. McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy, p. 124.
56. Smithsonian Institution, The Smithsonian Book of Books (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1992), p. 122.
57. For a discussion of the debate over the origin of Morse code, see Carleton Mabee, The American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, rev. ed. (Fleischmanns, N.Y.: Purple Mountain Press, 2000), pp. 201–06.
58. Kenneth Silverman, Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), pp. 164–65.
Chapter 3
1. John F. Stover, The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 18.
2. William F. Baringer, Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809–1865, vol. 2, 1849–60 (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside Bookshop, 1991), p. 10.
3. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1951), chart, p. 79.
4. Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 55.
5. Clifford F. Thies, “Development of the American Railroad Network during the Early 19th Century: Private Versus Public Enterprise,” Independent Institute Working Paper 42, October 2001 (http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj22n2/cj22n2-4.pdf).
6. Ibid.
7. The economic range of a bushel of wheat has been estimated to be about 200 miles, Arthur T. Hadley, Railroad Transportation, 1886, cited in Sarah H. Gordon, Passage to Union: How Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929 (Chicago: Ivan R Dee, 1997), p. 149. A bushel of wheat weighs 60 pounds and an acre could yield 25 bushels. Thus, a 100-acre farm would produce 75 tons of wheat. See Walter A. McDougall, Throes of Democracy (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 128.
8. Nicholas Faith, The World the Railways Made (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1990), p. 115.
9. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), p. 23.
10. Albro Martin, Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection & Rebirth of a Vital American Force (Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 166.
11. Patrick E. McLear, “The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad: A Symbol of Chicago’s Economic Maturity,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 73, no. 1 (Spring 1980), pp. 17–26.
12. Stewart H. Holbrook, The Story of American Railroads (New York: Crown, 1947), p. 134.
13. Donald L. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 95.
14. McLear, “Galena and Chicago Union Railroad.”
15. Martin, Railroads Triumphant, p. 166.
16. Ibid., p. 82
17. Stover, Routledge Historical Atlas, p. 23.
18. It wasn’t until 1874 that St. Louis finally agreed to a rail bridge. By that time Chicago had long since become ensconced as the rail center of the West.
19. Holbrook, Story of American Railroads, p. 101.
20. Bessie Louise Pierce, A History of Chicago, vol. 2 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), p. 57.
21. Richard C. Overton, Burlington West (Harvard University Press, 1941), p. 30; George H. Douglas, Rail City: Chicago USA (Berkeley, Calif.: Howell-North Books, 1981), p. 41.
22. Maury Klein, Unfinished Business: The Railroad in American Life (University Press of New England, 1994), p. 10.
23. Martin, Railroads Triumphant, p. 167.
24. Christian Wolmar, Blood, Iron, and Gold (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), p. 4.
25. A. H. Wickens, The Dynamics of Railway Vehicles—From Stephenson to Carter, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part F. Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit 212 (1998), p. 209.
26. Simon Winchester, The Men Who United the States (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), p. 248.
27. The developer of this steam-powered suction, Thomas Savery, wrote, “My engine at 60, 70, or 80 feet raises a full bore of water with much ease.” In practical application it was limited to less than that. Regardless, a 60–80-foot-deep mine leaves a lot of coal below it. Carl T. Lira, Introductory Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics (www.egr.msu.edu/~li
ra/supp/steam/savery.htm).
28. By accident, one day Newcomen discovered that letting water into the cylinder cooled the steam even faster and created even greater pulling power. But there remained the inefficiency of having to reheat a now-cooled container.
29. Fred Dibnah and David Hall, Age of Steam (London: BBC Worldwide, 2003), p. 44.
30. Railroad History, National Railroad Museum, Green Bay, Wis.
31. National Museum of Wales, Richard Trevithick’s Steam Locomotive, 2008.
32. A few years later, on Christmas Eve 1803, the people of the area were startled to see a Trevithick steam engine sitting atop a carriage moving through the streets without assistance. Unfortunately, the contraption wouldn’t make it past the holidays. Celebrating at the local pub, Trevithick’s assistants forgot to extinguish the fire in the boiler; the pressure grew, and the engine exploded. William Rosen, The Most Powerful Idea in the World (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 290.
33. The loss in pressure was equivalent to the atmospheric pressure (14.7 lbs./sq. in. at sea level). This insight came from a leading scientist of the time, Davies Gilbert, with whom Trevithick had become friendly and from whom he sought advice. Anthony Burton, Richard Trevithick: Giant of Steam (London: Aurum Press, 2000), p. 59.
34. Rosen, Most Powerful Idea, p. 296.
35. Even before Trevithick, an American, Oliver Evans, had developed a similar concept (the 30° calculation cited, in fact, was Evans’s). While Evans’s engine was demonstrated on water, it was never used on land (where the friction is much higher). Evans published his findings and even sent them with a friend to England “to be shown to the steam engineers there.” Whether Richard Trevithick ever saw them is unknown; however, his concept is the same as Evans’s. See Rosen, Most Powerful Idea, pp. 287–88.
36. Wolmar, Blood, Iron, and Gold, p. 6.
37. Rosen, Most Powerful Idea, p. 301.
38. George H. Douglas, All Aboard! The Railroad in American Life (New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1996), p. 17.
39. The Observer newspaper, cited in Age of Steam (www.railcentre.co.uk).
40. Wolmar, Blood, Iron, and Gold, p. 10.
41. The opening day of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was also the occasion of the first bystander fatality. With the great and the good assembled, Liverpool MP William Huskisson failed to cross the tracks swiftly enough and was struck by the speeding locomotive Rocket. Rocket made a heroic run at speeds up to thirty-six miles per hour to take its victim to the nearest hospital. Huskisson did not survive. Rosen, Most Powerful Idea, p. 309.
42. Steel is an alloy that includes iron, a mineral. While early instances of horse-drawn wagons had rolled on iron rails, the strength and durability of steel in time made it the common substance of rails.
43. Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 539.
44. Douglas, All Aboard!, pp. 20–21; Taylor, Transportation Revolution, p. 77.
45. Douglas, All Aboard!, p. 22.
46. Cooper, a man with little formal education, would become wealthy from his industrial activities, move to New York City, and found Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln would deliver his famous 1860 “right makes might” speech.
47. John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth (New York: HarperPerennial), 2004, p. 150.
48. Douglas, All Aboard!, p. 23.
49. Holbrook, Story of American Railroads, p. 24; Douglas, All Aboard!, p. 223.
50. The Best Friend of Charleston Railway Museum (www.bestfriendofcharleston.org).
51. S. Siles, The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer, cited in Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist (New York: HarperPerennial, 2010), pp. 283–84.
52. J. G. Martin, Seventy-Five Years’ History of the Boston Stock Exchange (Boston, 1871), cited in Thies, “Development of the American Railroad Network,” p. 16.
53. Holbrook, Story of American Railroads, p. 95.
54. Frances Carencross, The Death of Distance (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), coined the phrase “the death of distance” in reference to long-distance telecommunications. It is used here as an expression of the impact of railroads on the historically prevailing force of geography.
55. Taylor, Transportation Revolution, chart, p. 79: 3,328 miles of railroads and 3,326 miles of canals.
56. Stover, Routledge Historical Atlas, p. 20.
57. Gordon, Empire of Wealth, p. 151.
58. Rudi Volti, Society and Technological Change (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1955), p. 17.
59. Martin, Railroads Triumphant, p. 219.
60. Faith, World the Railways Made, pp. 129–30.
61. Ibid., p. 134.
62. Walter A. McDougall, Throes of Democracy (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 148.
63. Ibid., p. 148.
64. Jonathan Hughes and Louis P. Cain, American Economic History, 7th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2007), p. 160–61.
65. Gordon, Passage to Union, p. 272.
66. Opinion of Hon. John M. Read, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, In Favor of the Passenger Cars Running Every Day of the Week, Including Sunday (Philadelphia, 1867), cited in Gordon, Passage to Union, p. 114.
67. Stover, Routledge Historical Atlas, p. 44.
68. Holbrook, Story of American Railroads, p. 357.
69. Samuel Smiles, The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer (Follett, Foster, and Co. 1859), p. 205. Interestingly, just as “paperless” personal computers led to a rise in the consumption of paper, the iron horse prompted an increase in its animal equivalent as wagons, coaches, and the like were needed to transport the rail delivery to its final destination. McDougall, Throes of Democracy, p. 150.
70. Seymour Dunbar, A History of Travel in America, vol. 3 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1915), p. 938, quoting the Vincennes Western Sun, July 24, 1830.
71. Wolmar, Blood, Iron, and Gold, p. 78.
72. Michael Freeman, Railways and the Victorian Imagination (Yale University Press, 1999), p. 16.
73. Martin, Railroads Triumphant, p. 49.
74. Wolmar, Blood, Iron, and Gold, p. 91.
75. James W. Ely Jr., “Lincoln and the Rock Island Bridge Case” (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society).
76. Ibid., p. 8.
77. Hurd v. Rock Island Railroad Company, U.S. Circuit Court, Northern District of Illinois, August 1857.
78. Ely, “Lincoln and the Rock Island Bridge Case,” p. 9.
79. Douglas, All Aboard!, p. 96.
80. “Our peculiar institution” was a southern euphemism for slavery.
81. Gordon, Passage to Union, p. 134.
82. Stover, Routledge Historical Atlas, pp. 46–47.
83. Albert J. Churella, The Pennsylvania Railroad, vol. 1 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), p. viii.
84. Gordon, Empire of Wealth, p. 148.
85. Tony Judt, “The Glory of the Rails,” New York Review of Books, December 23, 2010, and January 13, 2011.
86. Doron Swade, The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer (New York: Viking, 2000), p. 10.
87. Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer (Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 143.
88. Swade, Difference Engine, p. 10.
89. Ibid., pp. 28–30.
90. Hyman, Charles Babbage, p. 165, quoting Babbage’s Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864).
91. Ibid., p. 164.
92. Swade, Difference Engine, pp. 114–15.
93. Ibid., p. 306.
94. John Markoff, “It Started Digital Wheels Turning,” New York Times, November 7, 2011.
Chapter 4
1. “A Monument to Charles Minot” (www.telegraph-history.org/charles-minot/index.html).
2. Ibid.
3. Albro Martin, Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection & Rebirth of a Vital American Force (Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 23, 24.
4. Kenneth Silverman, Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (N
ew York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), p. 73; Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers (New York: Berkeley Books, 1999), p. 25.
5. Carleton Mabee, The American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, rev. ed. (Fleischmanns, N.Y.: Purple Mountain Press, 2000), p. 98. Morse’s nickname for his much younger (by eight years) bride was Lucrece.
6. Silverman, Lightning Man, pp. 73–74.
7. Ibid., p. 154.
8. Mabee, American Leonardo, p. 151.
9. Silverman, Lightning Man, p. 148.
10. Silverman, Lightning Man, pp. 148–49.
11. Mabee, American Leonardo, p. 154.
12. Other developments were also essential to the telegraph. Luigi Galvani’s 1780 electric cell became Alessandro Volta’s 1800 battery capable of maintaining a constant current. Dane Hans Christian Ørsted’s 1820 discovery of the link between electricity and magnetism, and André-Marie Ampère’s implementation of that link in Paris the same year, laid the scientific foundation exploited by the developers of the telegraph.
13. John Desmond Bernal, A History of Classical Physics (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1997), p. 284.
14. Standage, Victorian Internet, p. 17.
15. Mabee, American Leonardo, p. 192.
16. “Looking for the Electric Telegraph” (www.connected-earth.com); Paul DeMarinis, “The Messenger,” 1998 (www.well.com/user/demarini/messenger.html).
17. Richard R. John, Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunication (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 46.
18. Mabee, American Leonardo, p. 191.
19. Standage, Victorian Internet, p. 9. The message was “Si vous réussissez, vous serez bien-tôt couvert de gloire” (If you succeed, you will bask in glory).
20. Standage, Victorian Internet, p. 13.
21. John, Network Nation, p. 54.
22. Each wire was connected to a joystick-like controller. When the stick was vertical, the circuit was open and the needle was vertical. Move the stick to the left and the arrow/needle followed; move to the right and the current’s direction reversed and the needle went right.
23. J. L. Kieve, Electric Telegraph: A Social and Economic History (Newton Abbott, U.K.: David & Charles, 1973), pp. 18–26.
