nstalled lines by stringing wires on poles or other convenient supporting structures where the right to use could be arranged. The poles or rights to use other supporting structure might be owned by the same company or by another entity. Over time, a collection of groups of private lines grew across the city and landscape. Ownership and rights to use these assets were traded, bought, sold, and bartered. Companies went into and got out of the business. Some succeeded while others failed. Telephone lines were similar to the lines used by telegraph operators to transmit messages using a code conceived by Samuel B. Morse in the early 1800s. Telegrams-written messages-were the end result of a process that started with a spoken or written message given to a telegraph oper- ator who encoded it into dots and dashes and sent it to another telegraph operator using a telegraph key. The second operator re- ceived the dots and dashes, decoded it, wrote it out on paper, and delivered or had it delivered by a third party to the person or entity it was intended for. Telegraphy was adopted by the railroads. Their rights-of-way easily and conveniently supported cross-country, intrastate, and interstate lines. Command and control of trains as well as switching trains to other tracks with speed and efficiency couldn't be accomplished without telegraphy. Can you imagine what it might be like to dis- patch and control trains with messages delivered by the Pony Express? Over time, this capability migrated to public use in 2 INTERNET AND TELECOM: A BRIEF HISTORY exchange for money and became a commercial business. In similar fashion, the telegraph key and typewriter were motorized and morphed into the Teletype machine and eliminated the need for the skilled Morse Operator. The Teletype machine spawned Telex (inter- national) and TWX (Domestic) services that lasted well into the 1980s when they were largely replaced by facsimile technology standard- ized by the CCIT (later renamed ITU). GROWTH AND CONSOLIDATION Expansive growth followed 