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AGENTS OF COMMUNICATION.
Communication is one of man's primal needs.

There was indeed a time when no formula of language existed, when men communicated with each other by means of gestures, grimaces, guttural sounds, or rude images of things seen; but it is impossible to conceive of a time when men had no means of communication at all.

And at last, after long ages, men evolved in sound the names of the things they knew and the forms of speech; ages later, the alphabet and the art of writing; ages later still, those wonderful instruments of extension for the written and spoken word: the telegraph, the telephone, the modern printing press, the phonograph, the typewriter, and the camera.
The word "telegraph" is derived from Greek and means "to write far"; so it is a very exact word, for to write far is precisely what we do when we send a telegram.

The word today, used as a noun, denotes the system of wires with stations and operators and messengers, girdling the earth and reaching into every civilized community, whereby news is carried swiftly by electricity.