9781422272688

Scan here to see how the Gutenberg press works.

and 1840s. Messages could be sent over telegraph wires using Morse code, a combination of dots and dashes. The spread of telegraph wires allowed messages to travel over long distances much more quickly. Until that time, news reporters who were working far from their offices relied on the mail service to send stories back to their editors. With the telegraph, a reporter could send a news story “over the wire” to the newspaper office, where it could be set into type and printed in the next day’s edition. The invention of the telephone during the 1870s allowed even faster communication, via voice. Technology now allowed people to communicate instantaneously over large distances—even across the Atlantic Ocean, thanks to undersea cables. The radio, which first appeared in the 1920s, also played a crucial role in the spread of news and information. One of the first notable broadcasts was on KDKA radio in Pittsburgh, which broadcast national and local election results in November of 1920. During the 1920s, as radios

10

Contemporary Issues: Media Bias