The Victorian Internet

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.

A lively, short history of the development and rapid growth a century and a half ago of the first electronic network, the telegraph, Standage's book debut is also a cautionary tale in how new technologies inspire unrealistic hopes for universal understanding and peace, and then are themselves blamed when those hopes are disappointed. The telegraph developed almost simultaneously in America and Britain in the 1840s. Standage, a British journalist, effectively traces the different sources and false starts of an invention that had many claims on its patents. In 1842, Samuel F.B. Morse demonstrated a working telegraph between two committee rooms of the Capitol, and Congress reluctantly voted $30,000 for an experimental line to Baltimore?89 to 83, with 70 abstaining "to avoid the responsibility of spending the public money for a machine they could not understand." By 1850 there were 12,000 miles of telegraph line in the U.S., and twice that two years later. Standage does a good job sorting through a complicated and often contentious history, showing the dramatic changes the telegraph brought to how business was conducted, news was reported and humanity viewed its world. The parallels he draws to today's Internet are catchy, but they sometimes overshadow his portrayal of the unique culture and sense of excitement the telegraph engendered?what one contemporary poet called "the thrill electric." News of the first transatlantic cable in 1858 led to predictions of world peace and an end to old prejudices and hostilities. Soon enough, however, Standage reports, criminal guile, government misinformation and that old human sport of romance found their way onto the wires. 18 illustrations. BOMC, QPB and History Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The telegraph, which now seems a curious relic, was once cutting-edge technology, every bit as hot, Standage reminds us, as today's Internet. Rapid delivery of messages to distant places was a wild dream for most of history; only on the eve of the French Revolution did a workable system come into existence. That first mechanical telegraph used visual signals relayed along a series of towers; but already scientists had experimented with signaling with electricity, which was thought to travel instantaneously. By the 1830s, Samuel Morse in the US and William Cooke in England had independently developed workable electric telegraphs. Curiously, neither had much initial luck finding backers. Morse's first demonstration of his device to Congress drew no support; even after a second demonstration won him funding, many congressmen believed they had seen a conjuring trick. Despite some dramatic successesas when British police wired ahead of felons escaping by train and had them arrested in a distant cityit was some time before the telegraph was more than a high-tech toy. But by the mid-1840s, both British and American telegraphy companies were showing profits, and by the end of that decade, growth was explosive. And by then, the elaborate culture of the telegraph system was taking shape. Telegraph operators and messenger boys became familiar parts of the social landscape. There was a growth industry in telegraph-based jokes, anecdotes, scams, and even superstitions. The charge per word transmitted made messages terse; the expense made most people use them only to report deaths in the family or other grave news. Technical improvementsnotably in the laying of submarine cableseventually led to a worldwide network. Standage, most recently (and suitably) editor of the London Daily Telegraphs technology section, competently relates all this, and the eventual erosion of the telegraph's power by the telephonewhich was at first seen merely as an improvement in the telegraph. A fascinating overview of a once world-shaking invention and its impact on society. Recommended to fans of scientific history. (b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In his first book, British science journalist Standage gives an engaging and readable account of the invention, growth, and decline of the telegraph. In the preface and epilog, Standage claims that by understanding the social changes brought about by the telegraph we can better understand the contemporary sociology of the Internet; however, he only seriously addresses their similarities in the final chapter. Instead, most of the book is a historical account, peppered with biographical, sociological, and technological anecdotes. Annteresa Lubrano's The Telegraph: How Technology Innovation Caused Social Change (Garland, 1997) investigates the same subject but takes a much more academic tone. This lay reader's history of telegraphy is recommended for public and academic libraries.?Wade Lee, Univ. of Toledo Libs., OH
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

On the surface, it is a flimsy comparison to make between the Internet of today and the telegraph of its golden age, 1840^-76. But this lively, anecdote-filled history reveals that the telegraph changed the world forever--from a hand-carried-message world to an instantaneous one. And with any groundbreaking system, there are the larger-than-life personalities: the last of the gentlemen amateur scientists, Samuel F. B. Morse, who devised the first truly working telegraph and developed its message code; Charles Wheatstone, perpetually irascible British academic, and his partner, experimenter William Cooke, who were working on the telegraph on the other side of the Atlantic. Indeed, Thomas Edison himself was a crack telegraph operator, and his expertise allowed him to raise the funds to begin his groundbreaking inventions. Standage has it all here, including the role the telegraph played in war (Crimea), spying (the Dreyfus affair, in which Captain Dreyfus was first betrayed and then saved by a telegram), and even love (sort of the first chat rooms, to use an Internet term). Joe Collins