Broadband Breakfast on June 17, 2026: The Telephone and Telegraph
Broadband Breakfast kicks off a three-part series on 250 years of American independence and 150 years of American telecommunications.
Highlights Reel
Full Event Video available for free
The first installment will explore the half-century from 1876 to 1926. This is the era in which American communications were transformed by the telephone and the rapid spread of long-distance cables. Beginning with Alexander Graham Bell's patent on the telephone on March 7, 1876, and the founding of Bell Telephone the following year, this era saw the rise of AT&T, the buildout of nationwide copper networks, and the completion of the first transcontinental telephone line in 1914. Submarine and overland cables stitched together commerce, government and family life at unprecedented speed, laying the physical and regulatory groundwork for everything that followed. Our panel will examine how the policy debates, monopoly questions, and infrastructure investments of this period continue to shape today's broadband landscape.
Broadband Breakfast
About the In-Person Event
Broadband Breakfast
About the 3-Part Webcast
Broadband Breakfast
Panelists
- Claude S. Fischer, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School in Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; author of America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)
- Menahem Blondheim, Professor of Communication and History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; author of News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994)
- Christopher Beauchamp, Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School; author of Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent That Changed America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015)
- Drew Clark (moderator), CEO and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast
Claude Fischer is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School, in Sociology, at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his areas of research is American social history. He is the author of the 1992 book, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, which won the Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology.
Menahem Blondheim is the Karl and Matilda Newhouse professor of communication and of history emeritus, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A Harvard PhD, he was an entrepreneur, VP and scientific manager in the broadband sector of Israel's high-tech industry, early in the digital age. He currently serves as Dean of the School of Media Studies at the College of Management, Rishon LeZion.
Christopher Beauchamp is Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. Among his areas of research are intellectual property and legal history. A Cambridge PhD, he is the author of the 2015 book, Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent That Changed America, which reexamines the legal battles over Bell's telephone patent and argues that the telephone was as much a creation of American law as of scientific innovation.
Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing tool to collect and verify broadband data left unpublished by the Federal Communications Commission. As CEO and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media community advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.
