History is not the story of the past; it is the study of the future. This one, with the group of men and little boy, was, in its day, as significant as a Steve Jobs public announcement of the creation of Apple. At the top of the two spires, at the center and on the right, appear to be two sets of boards. 

Well, they are boards, actually.

Those were known as Wigwags.  They were state-of-the-art communication in their day. They were line-of-sight communication for railroads across the country and worked as semaphore signals. Messages were passed down the string of Wigwags, a letter at a time, man to man. They were put out of business by the telegraph, and you can see the new telegraph system that was replacing the Wigwags in the upper left of the photograph. Those wires are the incoming telegraph system. I am sure that boy, dressed in his Sunday best, was told he was witnessing the end of an era and the birth of a new one.  Technology was moving America forward, and this photograph was a snapshot of the past – and the future.