Communications

The communication sector of an economy comprises a range of technologies, physical media, and institutions/rules that facilitate the storage of information through means other than a society's oral tradition and its transmission over distances beyond the normal reach of human conversation. This chapter provides data on the historical evolution of a disparate range of industries and institutions contributing to the movement and storage of information in the United States over the past two centuries. These include the U.S. postal service, the newspaper industry, book publishing, the telegraph, wired and cellular telephone service, radio and television, and the Internet.