"The Annihilation of Space"

A few years ago I was presented with a delightful gift from a group of judges who had invited me to speak to them.  It was the latest book by David McCullough entitled "The Greater Journey," detailing the adventures of now-famous Americans in Paris in the first half of the 19th Century.  One of the Americans was a young painter named Samuel Morse, who was in the process of inventing a new innovation, the telegraph.  In July 1844, after Morse returned to the United States, where he believed the country's laws and enterprising spirit would better support the development of his new device, word reached Paris that Morse, with federal funding, had opened a telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore.  McCullough reports:

A few days later, interest in Morse's device became greater by far at both ends when the Democratic National Convention being held at Baltimore became deadlocked and hundreds gathered about the telegraph in Washington for instantaneous news from the floor of the convention itself.  Martin Van Buren was tied for the nomination with the former minister to France, Lewis Cass.  Ultimately, on the eighth ballot, the convention chose a compromise candidate, a little-known senator from Tennessee, James K. Polk.

 In Paris, Galignani's Messenger reported that newspapers in Baltimore were now able to provide their readers with the latest information from Washington up to the very hour of going to press.  "This is indeed the annihilation of space."

Such an apt description for the connectivity that Morse initiated and that we now enjoy through so many different channels - radio, television, the Internet.  I wonder if the Paris publication or Samuel Morse had any inkling of where his invention would take us.