Hiram Sibley had founded Western Union in 1851 and in ten years built it into one of the dominant American communication companies, boasting transcontinental lines. When Western Union absorbed the US Telegraph Company around this date, it achieved a virtual monopoly over the telegraph industry. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
W. Bernard Carlson, "The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardner Hubbard and the Formation of the Middle-Class in America, 1875-1880," in Michael Thad Allen, Gabrielle Hecht (eds.), Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), 28.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Estimated
Type
Business/Industry