Editing Industrial Revolution (section)

=== Communications ===
Similarly communications made quantum leaps ahead. When the Founding Fathers signed the Constitution, you sent a message long distance by writing it down and giving it to either a courier on horseback or a ship. This meant that it would take months for news to get from China to Britain and vice versa for the reply. 

The first optical telegraph system was built in 1793, and the French Empire under Napoleon greatly expanded this network and made good use of its ability to transmit signals across great distances. The electrical telegraph evolved during the same time period, but the British and French initially ignored it because they thought the optical system was just fine. This didn't stop inventors from refining and perfecting the device, and the first commercial electric telegraph came online in 1837, with widespread adoption occurring shortly thereafter. Undersea cables were laid across the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian, and Pacific, connecting the world for the first time. Early versions of telex and fax machines used the technology as well. Interestingly enough, the Telegraph was in some ways like a proto-internet. It was operated by a network of users which formed their own community with romances, chatter and memes, users contrived elaborate systems of coding to convey lots of information with a few words and while people could make massive amount of money off it either by running companies or getting up-to-date information on world potato prices it was also a prime vehicle for fraud and other such skullduggery.

In the 1890s came Guglielmo Marconi and wireless telegraphy, which quickly became the standard comms equipment for ships and is the main reason anyone survived the sinking of the ''Titanic''. Alongside this came the discovery of radio waves, which went quickly from experimental technology to cheap, mass-produced sets. The telephone was also invented in the late 19th century.