“In patent applications and legal documents, too, the inventors had reason to think about their topic in the broadest possible terms: e.g. The giving, printing, stamping, and otherwise transmitting signals or the sounding of alarms, or the communication of intelligence....Confusion inspired anecdotes which often turned on awkward new meanings for familiar terms.”
James Gleick, the author of The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, describing inventions in the time of the telegraph.