The Resonating Interval: Exploring the Process of the Tetrad By Anthony Hempell

Before the mastery of electricity and the subsequent inventions of the telegraph and telephone, almost all human communication was conducted face-to-face or by written word. In 1838, Samuel Morse constructed the first practical telegraph system, and in 1844 sent a message across the United States' first operational telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C. Eight years after Morse's first transmission, the U.S. was wired with over 23,000 miles of telegraph lines.

In a time when instantaneous point-to-point communications are possible using a plethora of technologies, it is hard to imagine a time when receiving an instantaneously transmitted message was a marvel of genius. We are so regularly bombarded with information from around the globe that the meaning of space and distance as understood by the people of the mid-nineteenth century is gone. The telegraph was the technology which brought about an "annihilation of space," and ushered in a new age of an electrified, wired world.

Table 7: Tetrad of "Telegraph" (McLuhan & Powers, p.174)

(A) Enhancement Amplifies the isolated incident into an inclusive dateline Retrieved corporate or group involvement (C) Retrieval

(D) Reversal Reverses into dynamic broadcasting mode Obsolesced the Addison and Steele style newsheet (B) Obsolescence

• Tetrads: Past: Cash Money
• Tetrads: Past: Gunpowder
• Tetrads: Past: Telegraph

  Back to Tetrads: Past
  Forward to Tetrads: Present