The invention of the telegraph and the telephone provided the first "paving stones" for what has today become the information superhighway. The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress holds the main body of the papers of the two American inventors most responsible for the 19th century revolution in telecommunications, Samuel F. B. Morse and Alexander Graham Bell. During the next few years, manuscripts and photographs donated to the Library of Congress by descendents of Morse and Bell will be made available online as part of the American Memory Historical Collections. The production of these collections is supported by a generous gift from the AT&T Foundation.
This Library of Congress site is devoted to Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel F. B. Morse, and the early developement of telecommunications. The site is divided into two sections. The first section provides access to a selection of the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers. The selection includes 4,695 items dated from 1862 to 1939. The Bell Family Papers are indexed by series, subject, and name, and the collection is searchable. However, the second section dealing with Samuel F. B. Morse, remains in the preview stage as of 09/08/2004. It gives a brief overview of the life of Morse, but it is not yet searchable and makes no reference to Morse's career as a nativist.

