Smithsonian magazine provides some background on Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse Code and credited with inventing the telegraph.
It is interesting background, but not particularly relevant for community broadband until a paragraph toward the end:
Four years later, in July of 1844, news reached Paris and the rest of Europe that Professor Morse had opened a telegraph line, built with Congressional appropriation, between Washington and Baltimore, and that the telegraph was in full operation between the two cities, a distance of 34 miles.
From the beginning of telecommunications, the government played an essential role.
