 was the word. 6,000 years ago men we know nothing of raised monumental megaliths perhaps to count the solstices and mark the equinoxes or maybe to make some other sign not known to us. The message of the megalith is blurred but from some far point like this in the long corridor of time we trace the first attempt to bring to birth the word and then as eons pass to make it sound and be understood by all men and eventually to transmit it back to the waves in the air from whence it came. 1665, Victoria Queen of England sits firmly on the richest throne on earth. Abdul Asseez, Sultan of Turkey has just exceeded to power. He will die by an assassin's hand. William I, King of Prussia, later to become Kaiser of Germany. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, is shot dead in April. Napoleon III is Emperor of France. Alexander II, czar of all the rushes, hastens to emancipate the serfs. The Emperor of France Josef of Austria watches his Europe disintegrate. In Munich, Richard Wagner presents his Christen and his older. Victor Hugo completes his latest work The Legend of the Centuries. Jules Verne publishes a third book called From the Earth to the Moon. Tolstoy, newly wed, writes war and peace. Marx is correcting the poofs of Das Kapital. Darwin has completed the origin of species. Paris, the 17th of May 1865, in the building of the French Foreign Ministry. His Majesty the Emperor of France. His Majesty the Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia. His Majesty the King of Bavaria. His Majesty the King of the Belgians. His Majesty the King of Denmark. Her Majesty the Queen of Spain. His Majesty the King of the Helens. The Free City of Hamburg. His Majesty the King of Italy. His Majesty the King of the Netherlands. His Majesty the King of Portugal. His Majesty the King of Prussia. His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russians. His Majesty the King of Saxony. His Majesty the King of Sweden and Norway. The Swiss Confederation. His Majesty the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Equally animated by the desire to improve the present conditions of international telegraphy and to establish a permanent understanding between their states have hereby resolved to conclude a convention. At the Kedorce in Paris the rulers of an uneasy world came to terms faced with a new machine which abolished time and space. Already the lines of the telegraph stretched out and dared to cross the frontiers of sovereign states. In 1845 Morse had already transmitted in dot and dash his very first sentence What hath God wrought? Out of this was born the telephone. Elisha Gray was a handyman in Chicago. Alexander Graham Bell was working in Boston on the education of deaf mutes. On February the 14th 1876 with only a few hours difference these two men quite unaware of each other's existence applied for patents for the same invention. Thus it came to be that the telephone which was to link together human voices had at its very invention linked two minds in a single thought. No longer any language or any accent which does not travel over the continents and the oceans and a million conversations invade the silence of the air. Here on this northwest tip of continental Europe the cable to America starts its long undersea journey. The first submarine telegraph cable was laid in 1850 between England and France. An unsuspecting fishing boat caught it in its trawl, broke a piece off and took it into Boulogne. The captain thought he had discovered a rare marine alga with its center filled with gold. He probably thought he picked up a treasure. Actually he had. Then radio the word at last was free of all its shackles. Henceforth whether on earth in the sky or on the ocean man would no longer be alone. Henceforth the halls of space are filled with music. North shall spread around the earth the prayers that rise to God. No place at all is off the map. It takes no time to reach any point on the globe. Words, pictures, music all are exchanged. Nothing much of course is exotic anymore but surely familiarity need not breed contempt. Ada, Atana, Nigeria these drums are beating out words. They convey ideas and feelings which travel faster and lighter than words. They speak to each other and they can ask questions and they can answer. Listen. Goodbye. Good night. I love you. Thank you. And the space station too is here among the people of an ancient world. It tracks the satellites and guides the cosmonauts. Rising above the older magic of Africa are the towers of a new magic. There is a time for everything. There is even a time when all time meets. This modern magic can work greater magic than the old. Its pylons spring up beside the breadfruit trees and its cables reach out to the ends of the earth. No road can bring you here, only a barge or a helicopter. And yet nothing is very far away. For the children of today technology has leapt over the centuries. Men are of different color, different religions, different tongues. But in technology we see the beginning of a universal language. After all, one studio somewhere is really just the same as any other studio, anywhere else. Its purpose? To show people to other people. To make far away thoughts comprehensible to nearer minds. Television is here.