About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
The headline read “the Massachusetts Broadband Institute has halted state funding to WiredWest [because] their operating agreement is not compatible with the best interests of the Commonwealth, the towns or the residents.”
The story behind the headline is now there are Berkshire towns without broadband and with no clear path to getting it.
What is the problem? Why are some towns and villages prevented from connecting – small population? large distances? rough terrain? Whatever the problems may be, we conquered them in the past.
Let’s call broadband an information and communication highway. What happened 170 years ago when the railroad tracks went to some towns and bypassed others? Those with the railroad grew and those without did not. Keeping pace with these inventions matters to the health and welfare of the towns. So what happened in the past that is not happening now?
1832: S.F.B. Morse conceived of the telegraph. Twelve years later, in 1844, his first message was transmitted from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore over the telegraph. It read: “What hath God wrought.” After that, what Morse wrought was a fortune.
History should not short-change Morse. He did more than invent the telegraph, impressive as that was: He was a fine painter and was elected to the House of Representatives.
There is an interesting Berkshire/Morse connection. Nearly a century later, in 1940, Clara Morse – granddaughter of Morse and a Pittsfield resident – received a book of commemorative telegraph stamps from the Pittsfield Western Union Office.
What happened in between? Did the telegraph company tell Berkshire residents that they would be denied this communication highway 19th century-style? Nope.
From the time of the first telegraphic communication (1844), it was only four years before Berkshire was wired. In 1848 the Vermont Connecticut Telegraph Company was aided by local investments of $100 per share. The very first telegraph office was in North Adams on the second floor over the old post office.
Colonel William H. Phillips, Berkshire editor and historian, was the first operator in the United States to receive a Morse message by sound (1850). He studied the sounds of Morse code and became so proficient at “hearing” the message transmitted that he heard much more than he ought.
By the 1860s, the line running from Springfield to Albany went through Pittsfield and the rest of the county was a connected.
How did they run all that wire through remote places?
“The railroads were the first primary users of the telegraph, and they installed poles for telegraph wires along just about every railroad line in the country,” Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum Curator Jack Trowill explained. “Since the land had been cleared for tracks anyway, it was fairly easy to install the poles. After they installed electric power and telephone to the telegraph poles, the intersection of wires nearly blackened the sky.”
What about the telephone? Was there trouble with Berkshire County getting connected to the next big communication invention of the telephone? Nope.
Cebra Quackenbush built the Academy of Music on North Street. It was the largest indoor space in Pittsfield available for social gatherings; therefore, the Academy was the site of many historical Pittsfield events.
In 1877, a crowd of 300 gathered at the Academy to watch the first local demonstration of the telephone. That was just one year after Alexander Graham Bell was awarded his patent, and two years before the Bell Telephone Company was facing bankruptcy because too few American households were using the phone.
Berkshire was once again wired by the year 1905. That year the average life expectancy was 47 years. The total number of murders in the United States was 230. There were 8,000 cars in America, and only 144 miles of paved roads. An accountant and an engineer earned about $2,000 per year. Ninety percent of doctors did not attend college; they attended medical schools similar to trade schools that taught techniques. More Americans believed in the efficacy of a séance than an anesthetic. Ninety-five percent of births took place at home. Two out of every 10 Americans were illiterate. Marijuana, cocaine and heroin were sold by pharmacies as “perfect guardians of health.” The most common causes of death were pneumonia, influenza and tuberculosis. Only 14 percent of American homes had a bathtub, and only eight percent had a telephone.
A higher percentage of Berkshire people were connected than the national average. So why could we get the telegraph and telephone in the nineteenth century but cannot get broadband now? What is the problem and what is the solution?
