The Victorian Internet : the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth centuryѫs on-line pioneers /The Victorian Internet : the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth centuryʼs on-line pioneers

"A colorful tale of scientific discovery and technological cunning, The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. By 1865 telegraph cables spanned continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by its skeptics. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought." "The telegraph unleashed the greatest revolution in communications since the development of the printing press. Its saga offers many parallels to that of the Internet in our own time--and is a fascinating episode in the history of technology. Book jacket."--Jacket. Read more... For centuries people communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried and failed to develop speedier messaging devices. But in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention--the electric telegraph--shrank the world more quickly than ever before. A colorful tale of scientific discovery and technological cunning, The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. By 1865 telegraph cables spanned continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by its skeptics. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought. The telegraph unleashed the greatest revolution in communications since the development of the printing press. Its saga offers many parallels to that of the Internet in our own time--and is a fascinating episode in the history of technology. For thousands of years people had communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried to develop speedier messaging devices. Then, in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention--the telegraph--nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before, or since. This book tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. By 1865 telegraph cables spanned continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another, giving rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. The benefits of the network were hyped by advocates and dismissed by skeptics. Government regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought.--From publisher description The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. From the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet, whose experiments proved that electricity could be transmitted over great distances, to Samuel F. B. Morse, who developed the first practical electric telegraph in 1837, to Thomas Edison, who began his career in the telegraph business and proposed to his wife by tapping Morse code on her hand, Tom Standage tells a colorful tale of scientific discovery, technological cunning, personal rivalry, and cutthroat competition. The mother of all networks -- Strange, fierce fire -- Electric skeptics -- The thrill electric -- Wiring the world -- Steam-powered messages -- Codes, hackers, and cheats -- Love over the wires -- War and peace in the global village -- Information overload -- Decline and fall -- The legacy of the telegraph. Offers a historical review of the telegraph network, from its invention by Samuel Morse in the nineteenth century to the present day, exploring the social and political effects it has had on the world throughout its existence. On an APrIL DaY in 1746 at the grand convent of the Carthusians in Paris, about two hundred monks arranged themselves in a long, snaking line.