Text structure: history 7

Inventor Granville T. Woods Helps Divert Disaster

1. If you worked or traveled on a train in the mid-1800s you were putting your life at risk. Trains were incredibly dangerous—deadly crashes were common. Why? Picture this: Trains (often heading right toward one another) traveled on the same tracks. Enter rain or fog or any other sort of visual obstruction and the train conductor heading west might not see the train heading directly toward him from the east until—CRASH!—it was too late. It’s difficult to comprehend (in our world of lightning-fast communication) that there wasn’t a way for trains to talk to one another. But it was just a sad fact. That is, until Granville T. Woods, an ingenious inventor from Ohio, developed the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph.
2. The Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph,

   patented

   by Woods in 1887, was a telegraph machine that enabled messages to be sent from moving trains to railway stations. Dispatchers at the train stations were then able to know the locations of all trains on a given track. The dispatchers could send out messages to other trains if there was a delay or other issue. Railways across the United States clamored to get their hands on Woods’s invention. The result? Railway accidents significantly decreased, and riding and working on trains became much safer.