| abstract
| - The development of the electric telegraph in the 1840s and the telephone in the late 1870s made rapid long-distance communications possible. Both media began in local areas and then rapidly spread to connect large parts of the Nation and the world. Fewer than five years after its introduction, over 47,000 telephones were being used in the United States. The growth of these communications media accelerated the pace of social interaction, migration, commerce, and government activities. The telegraph and, to a greater degree, the telephone continued to be the principal media for telecommunications for most of the 20th Century. The introduction of undersea cables in the late 1850s enabled worldwide communications structures and the expansion of the leading telecommunications companies to a dominant position in the industry. The invention of "wireless telegraphy" (now known as "radio") at the turn of the 20th Century greatly increased the mobility of official and personal communications and made greater volumes of communications possible. Radio quickly emerged as both a medium for point-to-point (e.g., ship-to-shore) and point-to-multipoint telecommunications (e.g., police dispatch) and a mass medium for information, entertainment, and commerce. Fueled by technological advances like the amplifying vacuum tube in 1913, both coast-to-coast telephony and transatlantic radio transmission became possible, weaving the world even closer together. The utility and consequent worldwide adoption and rapid evolution of these new communications media prompted the creation of new legal and regulatory regimes both internationally and domestically to set rates, standardize terms of service, and allocate frequency bands to radio services by country. The advent of international communications via telegraph led to the International Telegraph Convention and the formation of the International Telegraph Union in 1865. The United States became a member of the ITU in 1908. The Department of State has led U.S. delegations to this organization (and its successor) since the United States first joined it. Communication via radiotelegraph led to the International Radiotelegraph Convention in 1906. On the domestic front, the Radio Act of 1912 established a radio licensing regime within the Department of Commerce and required certain ships to carry radios for communications. Due to conflict between amateur radio operators and the U.S. Navy and corporations, the Radio Act further regulated private radio communications, thus setting the precedent for federal regulation of wireless communications. In the Radio Act of 1927, Congress directed the transfer of this radio frequency licensing regime from the Department of Commerce (with the notable exception of federal agencies’ authorization to use radio frequencies) to a newly created five-member independent agency, the Federal Radio Commission. The Radio Act of 1927 also outlawed the interception of private radio messages and divulging their contents. Regulation of wireline communications remained separate from wireless, however, with responsibility shared between the Commerce Department and the Interstate Commerce Commission. Following on the popularity of radio, television debuted in the 1920s and by the 1950s was firmly entrenched.
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