The Machines That Built America: Season 1, Episode 5 - ProjectFreeTV

1 - 5: Telephone Wars

In the 1870s communicating with distant family requires sending a letter, and waiting days or weeks for a reply. The telegraph is faster, but too expensive for most people. When communication giant Western Union offers a colossal cash prize to anyone who can improve its network, two daring inventors go head-to-head in a fight that will forever change the way humans connect. Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray will stop at nothing to lay claim to the new technology and dominate the market. But there can be just one winner in this battle involving fraud, corruption and ground-breaking innovation that ultimately leads to the advent of the world's most common device: the telephone.