If Samuel Morse were alive today, he'd be proud. the first U.S. telegraph line, completed in 1844, helped pave the way for America's modern telecommunications network. In the 1850s, telegraph wires crisscrossed the country, connecting hundreds of railroad stations, and by the turn of the century they had made their way to Europe via transatlantic cables. The invention of the telephone, and, later, satellites and computers, expanded telecommunications into virtually every geographical nook and cranny and transformed communicating via Morse's dots and dashes into the exchange of ideas using words and images.

The network today is a mesh of wired and wireless connections, with mobile phones, telephones, television, cable, fax machines, e-mail and the Web sharing much of the same infrastructure. Large transmission lines, known as backbones, link local and regional networks the way interstate highways connect towns and cities. An assortment of sophisticated computer hardware, including hubs, bridges, gateways, repeaters and routers, shuttles information to its destination-around the building or across the world-along the most efficient path. The pathways can be any combination of wired or wireless technology, including copper lines, glass fiber, radio and satellite.