News - Papers

• First newspaper

• First Continually Published Newspaper

• America’s Early Newspapers

Pony Express

Established

• Short History

• Contributions

• Tidbits

Transcontinental Telegraph

Completed

• Linked Together

• Forever We Are Changed

• How This Came To Be

• An American Story

Telephone

• The Inventor

• The First Call

• Phone History

• A Short Essay

Radio

• First Radio Stations

• Advertising Was Born

T.V.

• First T.V. Station

• Early Commercial T.V.

• T.V. and Politics

Internet

• How It Came To Be

• A “Shared” Experience

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• What Is Coming?

1690And

1704

Our Communication Within The United States –A Time Line

18601861 1876 1920

1928

1969

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Facsimile of the first and only issue of the

English-American colonies' first newspaper,

published in Boston 1690.

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However….. the Governor and Council of

Massachusetts issued a broadside order

forbidding the publication of "anything in Print without License first

obtained from those that are or shall be appointed

by the Government to grant the same."

Premier Issue

Over three hundred years ago on 24 April 1704, John Campbell, the postmaster of Boston, published the first issue of the Boston News-Letter. A small single sheet, printed on both sides, the News-Letter made history as the first continuously published newspaper in America. The Boston News-Letter appeared weekly until 1776 and had no competition in Boston until 21 December 1719, when the first issue of the Boston Gazette appeared. Even Philadelphia and New York, the two largest cities in British America, lacked their own newspapers until 1719 and 1725 respectively.

This first issue of the Boston News-Letter, as befits a British colony, was full of news from Mother England, including lengthy abstracts from mid-December issues of the London Flying Post and London Gazette.

The local news, occupying only one column on page 2, consists of brief notices of maritime arrivals and activities, the appointment of Nathanael Byfield as Judge of the Admiralty, and the preaching of an "excellent" sermon by Rev. Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton of Boston's Old South Church on 1 Thessalonians 4.11: "And do your own business." The sheet concludes with Campbell's advertisement informing the public that the News-Letter would be continued weekly and soliciting advertisements and subscriptions.

The Boston News-Letter Number 1, 17-24 April 1704 Back to Timeline

America’s Early Newspapers

A Selection of Early American Newspapers and their Publishers

A Slow StartPerhaps the most noteworthy weakness in these early newspapers, especially those printed in the first decade or two of the century, was a lack of controversial coverage. If, as has been famously declared, a newspaper's job is to "raise hell," then early publications such as Campell's Boston News-Letter barely raised an eyebrow. The main reason was control by government authorities, who feared the power of even a fledgling press. The First Amendment, which promised freedom of the press, was not to come until 1791. In the meantime, journalists had to cope with a tradition of British censorship. Indeed, what might have become America's first newspaper, Benjamin Harris's Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick, died in 1690 after only one issue because it ran afoul of the Massachusetts licensing act. Later journalists simply stayed out of trouble by printing innocuous coverage or even giving government officials the chance to approve material before publication. Things changed somewhat when James Franklin, brother of Benjamin, established the New England Courant in 1721. Emery and Emery write: "The Courant was the first American newspaper to supply readers with what they liked and needed, rather than with information controlled by self-interested officials. Its style was bold and its literary quality high" (Emery 40). Franklin even challenged religious and political authorities, setting a precedent for journalists to come. The press was still far from free, however, as Franklin's own case illustrates: some two years after he began his fiesty newspaper, authorities banned him from publishing it. Nevertheless, press freedom apparently made some strides during this early period, thanks to a 1735 case involving John Peter Zenger, publisher of New York Weekly Journal. Charged with sedition after his paper had criticized colonial authorities, Zenger eventually won the case with the help of noted attorney Andrew Hamilton. Although the case set no legal precedent, Emery and Emery credit it with establishing a tone for freedom, noting that "after 1735 no other colonial court trial of a printer for seditious libel has come to light". (Excerpt from article by Mark Canada)

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History of the Pony Express• The Pony express provided a fast method to get information from Missouri to California. The importance of

spreading news was significant due to the pending problems of the issue of slavery in the United States. The Pony Express was organized by William Hepburn Russell as an overland mail route from between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California in April of 1860. The main purpose was to draw public attention to the central route in hope of gaining the million-dollar government mail contract for the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company. The route began on St. Joseph, Missouri and ran through the present day states of Kansas, Nebraska, northeast corner of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. The trail length was approximately 2,000 miles with about 165 stations along the route. The Pony express had on the average of 400 of the finest horses that were ridden 10 to 15 miles by over 185 riders. The official end of the Pony Express came in October 1861 with the completion of the telegraph. The most famous ride and the fastest delivery was done in 7 days and 17 hours between the telegraph line, and the carrier’s precious letter was Lincoln’s Inaugural Address. It was an important delivery as the country was in despair over the problems that were forming in regards to the slavery issue. The idea behind the Pony express, a horseback relay mail service, goes back to at least ancient Rome and Persia. The first attempt to organize the mail service was not successful. It took about six months to get a letter from Missouri to California. The emigrants who moved west in the mid-1800’s anxiously waited to hear from friends and family back home. The people in the west demanded a better and faster service than the Overland Express Route (Clipping Nevada maps Overland Express jpg) thus, the northern route of the Pony Express. Could YOU make the RIDE? WATCH and decide…..

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Contributions of the Pony Express• Most people believed the Pony Express lasted a long time, but it was only in operation for a short 19 months, 2

weeks, and 3 days. The importance of the contributions of the Pony Express are numerous. It proved that a route could be used all winter blazing a trail for the transcontinental railroad. One of the most important contributions was keeping communications open from the east to the west. The Pony Express had many heroes. The advertisements called for skinny men who were expert riders, willing to risk death. The Pony Express preferred young men, and the ads often times asked for brave orphans. The chronology dates are very important for the Pony Express. The operations began April 3, 1860, with the first eastbound mail being carried across county that very day. The next day an eastbound rider left California while the first westbound rider arrived in California on April 13, 1860. Then on April 23, 1860 the first rider routed westbound arrived in Benicia, California from Sacramento via Oakland. The speed of these riders was amazing. Then came the working crews for the transcontinental railroad. On October 18, 1861, the westbound crews meet the eastbound crews six days later and the transcontinental railroad was completed in Utah. Officially, the Pony Express ceased operations. Although, there was one last ride on November 21, 1861. The company failed to get the government contract due to political pressures and the outbreak of the Civil war. Thus, the end of the glamorous Pony Express, but at what cost? Financially, the owners spent $700,000.00 on the Pony Express and ended with a $200,000.00 deficit, but the contributions the Pony Express made to the U.S. was incredibly significant.

• LISTEN TO RIDER “BOSTON” TELL HIS STORY

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Interesting Tidbits

Replica of Pony Express Messenger's Badge

Pony Express statue in St. Joseph, Missouri

William Cody, aka Buffalo Bill

Letter Carried on First Eastbound Trip Post Mark used on First Eastbound cover

Illustrated Map of Pony Express Route in 1860, by William Henry Jackson~ Courtesy the Library of Congress ~

The Pony Express mail route, April 3, 1860 – October 24, 1861; Reproduction of Jackson illustration issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Pony Express founding on April 3, 1960. Reproduction of

Jackson's map issued by the Union Pacific Railroad Company.Back to Timeline

The United States – Linked Together• Long before there was an Internet or an iPad, before people were social networking

and instant messaging, Americans had already got wired.

• 1861 marked the completion of the transcontinental telegraph. From sea to sea, it electronically knitted together a nation that was simultaneously tearing itself apart, North and South, in the Civil War.

• Americans soon saw that a breakthrough in the spread of technology could enhance national identity and, just as today, that it could vastly change lives.

• 'It was huge,' says Amy Fischer, archivist for Western Union, which strung the line across mountains, canyons and tribal lands to make the final connection. '... With the Civil War just a few months old, the idea that California, the growing cities of California, could talk to Washington and the East Coast in real time was huge. It's hard to overstate the impact of that.'

• On October 24, 1861, with the push of a button, California's chief justice, Stephen J. Field, wired a message from San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, congratulating him on the transcontinental telegraph's completion that day. He added the wish that it would be a 'means of strengthening the attachment which binds both the East and the West to the Union.

High-tech gadget: A repairman in 1863 working on a telegraph line

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Life as People Knew It - Changed Forever

The Pony Express, which boasted it could deliver a letter from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Missouri, in the unheard of time of 10 days when it began operations on April 3, 1860, shut down 19 months later — on the same day the transcontinental telegraph went live.

In this 1861-dated artist's rendering, a pony express rider greets Western Union linemen as they string wires of the first transcontinental telegraph

A rudimentary version of the Internet not much more advanced than two tin cans and a string had been born. But it worked, and it grew.

Just a few years after the nation was wired, telegraph technology would be extended to the rest of North America, and soon cylindrical wires from Mexico to Canada would jangle with little bursts of electromagnetic juice, sending messages of every kind and redefining how communication can mean business.

As the United States rebuilt itself following the devastating Civil War, it did so in no small part with money wired from Washington. In 1869, when the final piece of track connecting the transcontinental railroad was laid in Promontory, Utah, a young news organization called The Associated Press sent a story about it out on the wire.

One long-term effect was the nation was connected in real time. For the first time,

businesses could do business nationally. The government could communicate nationally in

almost real time.

'I really see the telegraph as the original technology, the grandfather of all these other technologies that came

out of it: the telephone, the teletype, the fax, the Internet,' said telegraph historian Thomas Jepsen, author

of 'My Sisters Telegraphic: Women In Telegraph Office 1846-1950.'

In its time, the telegraph was in some ways an even greater influence on the way people communicate than

the Internet is today.

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One of the Visionaries

Just as the iPad, the iPod and the personal computer had a visionary genius behind them in Steve Jobs, the telegraph had one in

Samuel F.B. Morse.

Morse obtained a patent for his telegraph in 1840, and four years later he sent his famous first message — 'What hath God wrought?' — over a line he'd strung from Washington to

Baltimore with $30,000 in federal money.

The technology took off. In 1845, more than a century before the TV show 'America's Most Wanted,' a man named John Tawell was arrested in England for the murder of his mistress after police

received a telegraphed tip, telling them where he was.

A year later, the AP was formed and began relaying news of the Mexican-American War through a combination of telegraph

wires and horseback riders, which demonstrated a limitation in the new technology.

Samuel Morse (1791-1872) was an American physicist who invented electromagnetic telegraphy.A painter and part-time inventor who twice ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York, Morse was in his early 40s in 1831 when he came up with the idea for the telegraph.He said in his papers at the Library of Congress that it was inspired by a discussion about electromagnetics with a fellow passenger on an ocean liner.

By the mid-1830s he'd developed Morse Code, the series of dots and dashes that telegraph key operators would tap out on their little contraptions.The result would flash across the country, and later around the world, where it would be translated back into words on the other end.

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An American Story'It's a very American story,' said Christopher Corbett, author of 'Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express.‘ Adding that not only was the project brought in with amazing speed but that it 'completely changed everything in a flash,' from the introduction of groundbreaking technology to the country's own self-image.

'California was almost like a satellite, if you think about it,' he said. 'It was almost 2,000 miles between the Missouri River and the California slope. But something like the telegraph made it seem closer.'

Completing the project so quickly also infused the country with a kind of can-do spirit that he and other historians say it may not have had in quite as much abundance when the project was initiated.

A group of Western Union Messengers in

Norfolk, Virginia

Cable telegraphers at the New York offices of The Associated Press in 1917

Delivery clerk Joe Martinez gives messages at Postal

Telegraph-Cable Company's Radio City office in New

York, 1942Back to Timeline

Alexander Graham Bell• In 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his revolutionary new invention--the

telephone.

• The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where the younger Bell found work as a teacher at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf. He later married one of his students, Mabel Hubbard.

• While in Boston, Bell became very interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Samuel F.B. Morse's invention of the telegraph in 1843 had made nearly instantaneous communication possible between two distant points. The drawback of the telegraph, however, was that it still required hand-delivery of messages between telegraph stations and recipients, and only one message could be transmitted at a time. Bell wanted to improve on this by creating a "harmonic telegraph," a device that combined aspects of the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to each other from a distance.

• With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype. In this first telephone, sound waves caused an electric current to vary in intensity and frequency, causing a thin, soft iron plate--called the diaphragm--to vibrate. These vibrations were transferred magnetically to another wire connected to a diaphragm in another, distant instrument. When that diaphragm vibrated, the original sound would be replicated in the ear of the receiving instrument. Three days after filing the patent, the telephone carried its first intelligible message--the famous "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you"--from Bell to his assistant.

• Bell's patent filing beat a similar claim by Elisha Gray by only two hours. Not wanting to be shut out of the communications market, Western Union Telegraph Company employed Gray and fellow inventor Thomas A. Edison to develop their own telephone technology. Bell sued, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Bell's patent rights. In the years to come, the Bell Company withstood repeated legal challenges to emerge as the massive American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and form the foundation of the modern telecommunications industry.

Alexander Graham Bell

Portrait of Alexander Graham Bellca. 1914–1919

Born March 3, 1847Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Died August 2, 1922(1922-08-02) (aged 75)

Cause of death Complications from diabetes

Residence UK, Canada, US

Citizenship US, UK,Canada (de facto, 1870–1871)

Alma mater University of EdinburghUniversity College London

OccupationInventor, Scientist, Engineer, Professor (Boston University), Teacher of the deaf

Known for Inventing the Telephone

Spouse(s) Mabel Hubbard(married 1877–1922)

Children (4) Two sons who died in infancy and two daughters

Parents Alexander Melville BellEliza Grace Symonds Bell

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A Short Essay• The invention of the telephone has made

communication much easier.

In the early 1800s, communication was extremely difficult. News spread through word of mouth, which left many people misinformed. It was like a game of telephone, where the message spreads down the line from person to person and the last person hears a different version of the story.

Then there was the postal service, which was also slow and unreliable. Letters would get lost in the mail. Railroads and steamboats allowed people to send letters from one city to another. However, that was also slow.

People relied on the newspaper, but at first the papers were slow to gather information and put it together in a tangible way.

The telegraph was next and it lasted about 30 years. It operated using morse code. If you wanted to get or receive a message you had to go to a telegraph office. It used a dot and dash system, and you could only send one message at a time.

Alexander Graham Bell wanted to find a way to send more than one message at a time. In 1876 he invented the telephone.

Before the switchboard was invented for the telephone, each person had their own ring. Every time someone used the phone, everybody's phone would ring. It was unorganized and inefficient. Anybody could pick up the phone and listen to a random conversation.

The telephone continued to improve and eventually they developed amplifiers so people could have phones in their home and could talk long-distance.

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The First Radio Stations• One of the nation's first radio stations began

broadcasting in Detroit on August 20, 1920 -- station 8MK, now operating as WWJ. The station was owned by the Detroit News, and its daily program was called "Tonight's Dinner." For some reason, the station was granted an amateur license, which soon changed to commercial. The first station granted a commercial license was KDKA in Pittsburgh, which began broadcasting in October of 1920. On November 2, 1920, Westinghouse's KDKA-Pittsburgh broadcast the Harding-Cox election returns and began a daily schedule of radio programs. Radio soon caught the public's fancy, and the number of stations grew rapidly. Now, there are more than 11,000 radio stations across the U.S.

Old Time Radio

KDKA - The first officially licensed radio station in Pittsburgh, Pa.

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The Birth of Advertising• Radio broadcasting in the United States started with the Westinghouse

Company. The company asked Frank Conrad, one of their engineers, to start regularly broadcasting music, while they would sell radios to pay for the service. Westinghouse applied for a commercial radio license in 1920, and started their station KDKA, the first officially government licensed radio station. The station’s first broadcast was the election returns of the Harding-Cox presidential race. Westinghouse also took out ads in the newspaper advertising radios for sale to the public. Soon, thousand of radio stations emerged that played a wide variety of broadcasts and reached people across the country that had bought or built their own receivers. The home building of receivers created a problem in the market, since people could simply build their own radios rather than going out to buy them and the government was forced to step in. To curb this a government-sanctioned agreement created the Radio Corporation Agreements, RCA, was formed to manage the patents for the technology of the receiver and transmitter. Companies like General Electric and Westinghouse were allowed to make receivers while Western Electric was allowed to build transmitters. Also in the agreements, AT&T was made the only station that was allowed to engage in toll broadcasting and chain broadcasting. This paved the way for the next step in radio development in America, radio advertising. WEAF, an AT&T station in New York broadcasted the first radio advertisement in 1923. Even with the RCA agreements, other station began radio advertising. Most of the other radio stations were owned by private businesses and were used exclusively to sell that company’s products. The RCA agreements did create a problem

though, it gave AT&T a monopoly over toll broadcasting and therefore radio advertisements. To break the monopoly, NBC and CBS were created and became the first radio networks in the late 1920s era. Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow became the first radio journalists, and by the end of the decade the radio had become an important source for news in America. In the next decade war in Europe again broke out and it fell on the radio to cover it. The radio acted to pacify and assuage the worries of a confused and scared public. More importantly the radio helped to pull together the nation’s moral and backing of the war effort. With the end of the war in 1945 television saw its rise to prominence and radio began to go on a slow but steady decline. But in the 1950’s thanks to Rock and Roll the radio saw new life.

TAKE A LISTEN

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The First Television Station• 1928: W3XK, the first American TV station, begins broadcasting

from suburban Washington, D.C.

• The station was an outgrowth of the work done by Charles Francis Jenkins in devising a way to transmit pictures over the airwaves, a process he called "radiovision." He sold several thousand receiving sets, mostly to hobbyists, and, after receiving permission to start an experimental TV transmitting station, aired programming five nights a week until shutting down in 1932.

• Jenkins essentially brought the wrong technology to the field: His receiving sets relied on a 48-line image projected onto a 6-inch-square mirror to create the picture, rather than using electronics, the technology that determined the future of television.

• An interesting aside: Jenkins was also the first to air a television commercial. He was fined by the government for doing so, a practice that was discontinued, unfortunately, as the medium matured.

• (Source: The Center for the Study of Technology and Society, tvhistory.tv) A 1928 television from General

Electric initially receives alternating sound and picture.

Photo: tvhistory.tvBack to Timeline

The Beginning of Commercial T.V.• By 1949 Americans who lived within range of the growing

number of television stations in the country could watch, for example, The Texaco Star Theater (1948), starring Milton Berle, or the children's program, Howdy Doody (1947). They could also choose between two 15-minute newscasts, CBS TV News (1948) with Douglas Edwards and NBC's Camel News Caravan (1948) with John Cameron Swayze (who was required by the tobacco company sponsor to have a burning cigarette always visible when he was on camera). Many early programs such as Amos 'n' Andy (1951) or The Jack Benny Show (1950) were borrowed from early television's older, more established Big Brother: network radio. Most of the formats of the new programs newscasts, situation comedies, variety shows, and dramas were borrowed from radio, too. NBC and CBS took the funds needed to establish this new medium from their radio profits. However, television networks soon would be making substantial profits of their own, and network radio would all but disappear, except as a carrier of hourly

newscasts. Ideas on what to do with the element television added to radio, the visuals, sometimes seemed in short supply. On news programs, in particular, the temptation was to fill the screen with "talking heads," newscasters simply reading the news, as they might have for radio. For shots of news events, the networks relied initially on the newsreel companies, whose work had been shown previously in movie studios. The number of television sets in use rose from 6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951. No new invention entered American homes faster than black and white television sets; by 1955 half of all U.S. homes had one.

Howdy Doody

The Lone Ranger

The Price Is Right

Early News Clip

60 Years of NBC News

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Television and Politics

• The election of a young and vital president in 1960, John F. Kennedy, seemed to provide evidence of how profoundly television would

change politics. Commentators pointed to the first televised debate that fall between Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican's nominee. A survey of those who listened to the debate on radio indicated that

Nixon had won; however, those who watched on television, and were able to contrast Nixon's poor posture and poorly shaven face with Kennedy's poise and grace, were more likely to think Kennedy

had won the debate.The Debate

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The Internet – How it Came to Be

The Internet has transformed the world. It has grown to be the single most useful resource on most subjects. Bills can be paid online, you can instantly connect and talk to your loved ones, and you can find the research for your paper without ever stepping foot in the library. How did the Internet evolve into what it is today?

The Start Modern Internet

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ARAPNET: The Start of the Internet• In 1969, the ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency NETwork) was officially brought online. This is considered the first version

of the Internet, although the term "Internet" was not used until 1974 when it was used in a paper explaining the inner workings of the TCP/IP system.

• At first, it connected four computers at universities in the southwest of the United States - UCLA, Stanford, UCSB, and the University of Utah. Other computers were quickly added just a year later at Harvard, MIT, BBN, and Systems Development Corporation.

• One year later, additional computers were added from Stanford, additional labs at MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, and Case Western Reserve University.

• By 1970, there were over 23 facilities connected together. In the months and years that followed, more and more computers were added to this network.

Early UsersThis early version of the Internet was not intended for public use. It was used by government contractors and universities

working on secret projects. The progress on any project could be checked by anyone connected to the network and updates

could be provided in real time, making it easy to keep everyone in the project in the loop.

In addition, the early Internet was used by computer experts, engineers, scientists, and librarians. Libraries used the Internet

as a way of automating and networking their catalogs. The Internet was an extremely complex system, and individuals had

to be trained to understand how to use it.

Features Added 1972, an early form of electronic mail was adapted for ARPANET. This early form of electronic mail also used a username and an address to send and receive the messages.1972, logging on to a remote computer was established.1973, file transfers were available between different Internet sites.1976, the Ethernet cable was developed.1979, the first USENET were created using the TCP/IP protocol. With these new developments, newsgroups had been formed.1983 a domain name system had been created which simplified the process of Internet exploration.By 1984 a common computer language had developed that allowed all computers on the network to communicate with each other.

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Modern Internet• The Internet continued to develop and grow. The commands for electronic mail, as well as

other components of the Internet were standardized. This made it easier for individuals to use the Internet, and thus it became more applicable for the public in general. More and more universities and libraries connected to the system, and the amount of websites grew exponentially. However, the Internet was still difficult to use for the majority of people.

• By 1991, the first friendly interface to the Internet was created at the University of Minnesota. The University essentially created a menu system which allowed for easy access of files and information between computers on the campus. Thus, this began the transformation of Internet into a form that the average individual could use.

• Today the Internet links millions of computers around the globe to each other and contains numerous tools that make finding information easy and user friendly. Search engines help you find information on any subject by matching keywords which you specify to sites in cyberspace which pertain to your subject.

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Changes For Us

• With the Internet came the promise of the erasure of all symbolic borders. If the interstate highways had allowed physical freedom, the Internet allowed a different kind of freedom, one unprecedented in human experience.

• It was no coincidence that it was initially referred to as the information superhighway: Seemingly overnight, the knowledge (and trivia and gossip) of the world was available to anyone with a keyboard and a modem; people who had never met and would never meet could communicate as if they were lifelong friends.

• The old-time television executives no longer had as firm a grip on how citizens would spend their time; now the individual at his or her computer terminal was given the power to decide how he or she would be informed, entertained or infuriated at a given moment. No one else had the absolute authority to program the individual's life; he or she made that decision, moment by moment.

• What in the past might have taken a person a lifetime -- searching for mankind's recorded wisdom in distant and magnificent libraries -- now, in theory, was available with a series of key taps from one's room, regardless of how modest. What had once seemed inconceivable had, in the blink of an eye, become routine. A Smaller World

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A Smaller World

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