It would be interesting to see the wiring configurations behind the early Western Electric catalog pieces covered and how it eventually led to the 2-wire Tip and Ring configuration if that was not used from day-1
PS Little further back maybe but there is a nice outline of how the naval Semaphore system got started in the James Burke Connections (S3E08) [1] -- I was looking for one where he got into circa Roman long distance fire signaling and how they got significant bits to work