Telecom

Starting in the early 1800's development of telecommunications technology kicked into high gear. From the 1830 creation of a small-scale telegraph system by Gauss and Weber it took only ten years for Samuel Morse to create and patent a practical telegraph system that would become the basis of a worldwide communication system.

It was only thirty more years before Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson patented their telephone device; Elisha Grey developed an identical system but lost out on the patent race. Ten years later Heinrich Hertz created the first man-made radio waves; less than ten years after than Marconi developed a wireless telegraph system.

The idea of using newly-discovered technology to bridge the gap of distance between individuals became a passion for inventors across the globe. It was an exciting new world, with seemingly limitless possibilities.

Of course, as with all newly-developed technologies there were failures, from the simply impractical to the outright hare-brained. Films of fanciful flying machines that flopped, flapped, and ultimately crashed are a staple of comedy cinema. Telecommunications technology was no different. Reginald Ferris's tele-speak system involved two devices that would ostensibly synchnize a speaker's mouth and tongue and replicate his speech in the mouth of a "listener" at the other end of the network; photographs of Ferris's mangled face can be found in countless history books.

Among the little-known pioneers in the field of communications were Henry Harding and Jacob Fallstein; during the 1910's they worked tirelessly in a small shack in the back of Harding's Upstate New York home to develop a device that would allow two individuals to communicate over a distance by directly linking their thoughts - literally a technological form of two-way telepathy.

What is even less known is this: they succeeded.