The telegraph’s lowering of communication costs enabled firms to better coordinate movements in rail traffic and made possible more-informed and better decisions in many other industries. In the productivity boom that followed World War I, a chief technological innovation was the spread of electrification to the factory floor.
By allowing each machine to be driven by its own power source, electric motors spurred the development  1  This discussion is based on Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., and William L. Wascher, "Lessons from the Past Productivity Booms (139 KB PDF)," Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 18, (Spring 2004).