The telegraph ushered in a new global communications regime , accompanied by a restructuring of the national postal systems , and closely followed by the advent of telephone lines . With the value of international news at a premium , governments , businesses , and news agencies moved aggressively to reduce transmission times . In 1865 , Reuters had the scoop on the Lincoln assassination , reporting the news in England twelve days after the event took place . In 1866 , an undersea telegraph cable successfully connected Ireland to Newfoundland ( and thus the Western Union network ) cutting trans-Atlantic transmission time from days to hours . The transatlantic cable allowed fast exchange of information about the London and New York stock exchanges , as well as the New York , Chicago , and Liverpool commodity exchanges — for the price of $ 5 – 10 , in gold , per word . Transmitting On 11 May 1857 , a young British telegraph operator in Delhi signaled home to alert the authorities of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 . The rebels proceeded to disrupt the British telegraph network , which was rebuilt with more redundancies . In 1902 – 1903 , Britain and the U.S. completed the circumtelegraphy of the planet with transpacific cables from Canada to Fiji and New Zealand ( British Empire ) , and from the US to Hawaii and the occupied Philippines . U.S. reassertions of the Monroe Doctrine notwithstanding , Latin America was a battleground of competing telegraphic interests until World War I , after which U.S. interests finally did consolidate their power in the hemisphere
Lincoln assassination
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
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