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4. Among the most readable, accessible sources on the patent struggles is Josephson, Matthew, Edison: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959).Google Scholar

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12. Carey and Quirk.

13. Czitrom, Daniel Joseph, “Media and the American Mind: The Intellectual and Cultural Reception of Modern Communication, 1838–1965,” Diss., Univ. of Wisconsin, 1979, p. 11Google Scholar. Whereas I have commented on the essentially religious metaphors that greeted the telegraph in the essays cited above, Czitrom brings this material together in a systematic way.

14. Ibid., p. 12.

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17. Ibid., p. 91.

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23. By a vanishing mediator—a concept borrowed from Frederick Jameson—I mean a notion that serves as a bearer of change but that can disappear once that change is ratified in the reality of institutions. See Jameson, Frederic, “The Vanishing Mediator,” Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 5 (Birmingham, U.K.: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1974), pp. 111–49.Google Scholar

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28. The quotation is from an as yet unpublished manuscript by Douglas Birkhead of Louisiana State Univ. Birkhead develops these themes in some detail.

29. On urban imperialism, see Schlesinger, Arthur M., The Rise of the City, 1878–1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1933)Google Scholar, and Pred, Allan R., Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information: The United States System of Cities, 1790–1840 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. Among the few studies on the telegraph and empire, the most distinguished is Fortner, Robert, Messiahs and Monopolists: A Cultural History of Canadian Communication Systems, 1846–1914, diss. Univ. of Illinois, 1978Google Scholar; see also Field, James A. Jr., “American Imperialism: The Worst Chapter in Almost Any Book,” American Historical Review, 83, No. 3 (06 1978), 644–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. In making these remarks I am much indebted to the work of Fortner and Field.

32. On these matters there are useful suggestions in Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973).Google Scholar

33. Quoted in Wilson, Geoffrey, The Old Telegraphs (London: Phillimore, 1976), p. 122.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., p. 123.

35. Ibid., p. 210.

36. Thompson, , p. 11.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., pp. 205–6.

38. For additional details, see Carey and Sims.

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45. Schivelbusch's “Railroad Space and Railroad Time” is the inspiration for some of these remarks. See also his wonderful book The Railway Journey (New York: Urizen, 1979).Google Scholar

46. I am again suggesting a general social process. The invasion of the sabbath and the night time by commerce were also attempts in the late nineteenth century to press against the frontier of time. See Carey, James W., “Culture, Geography and Communications: The Work of Innis in American Context,” in Melody, William H. et al. , eds., Culture, Communication and Dependency: The Tradition of H. A. Innis (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1980).Google Scholar

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50. Ibid. See also Bartky, Ian R. and Harrison, Elizabeth, “Standard and Daylight Saving Time,” Scientific American, 240, No. 5 (05 1979), 46–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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