Electrical communication progressed rapidly after Samuel Morse demonstrated the telegraph in 1838. Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861. Five years later the first transoceanic cable was laid. In 1875 A.G. Bell transmitted the first complete sentence heard over wire, and the first Bell telephone company was started in 1878. The first telephones were sold in pairs; the subscriber had to install their own lines. When the early telephone exchanges were built they were manned by young boys. The dial telephone was invented by a Kansas City undertaker in 1889. Radio and telephony developed with the telephone system, and the first radiotelephone linking the U.S. and Europe was established in 1927. The first amplitude modulation (AM) radio station began operating in Springfield, Mass., shortly after World War I, and the first frequency modulation (FM) station was authorized to operate by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1940. The first television station was authorized by the FCC in 1941 and the first CATV station system began several years later. (MG)