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Time and Distance Overcome

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Time and Distance Overcome
Mankind has since the beginning of time invented things that had changed the world. Whether it was something as simple as a stone weapon to kill off animals, or something life-changing as the telephone, we humans have always been extremely curious. We follow our own instincts, and new ideas are formed. In the 1870s, Alexander Graham Bell invented what now has become the most important thing in our modern world- the telephone, but it was not as widely accepted because at the time, “The world was not waiting for the telephone” (Biss 1). The text “time and Distance Overcome” is written by Eula Biss in which it has described how the telephone was received back then. In the beginning, you were able to, if paid to witness it being demonstrated by Bell in a local church and then into a plaything for rich people. It quickly went downhill from. 1889, the New York Times reported a war between phone companies, homeowners, and business owners. Telephone poles were erected, but then sawed down again by these owners. Judges in court found the people who sawed down the poles, “not guilty of malicious mischief.” People werent exactly excited or welcoming to the idea of a telephone. In fact, they went out of their way to get rid of these poles. The war continued for years and it only got worse. According to Biss, “From the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle twentieth century black men were lynched for crimes real and imagined, for whistles, for rumors, for disputing with a white man,” for “unpopularity,” for “asking a white woman in marriage,” for peeping in a

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