The document discusses several key inventions from the 18th and 19th centuries, including early attempts at electric telegraph communication in the 1770s, Samuel Morse successfully sending the first telegram in 1837, the steam engine originally being used to pump water before being adapted by James Watt to drive machinery, and the opening of the first rail line in 1825 which led to a railway boom across America and Britain with lines crossing mountains, tunnels, and rivers.