The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers [Paperback]

Tom Standage (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 15, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0425171698 | ISBN-13: 978-0425171691

"A fascinating walk through a pivotal period in human history."--USA Today

For many people, the Internet is the epitome of cutting-edge technology. But in the nineteenth century, the first online communications network was already in place--the telegraph. And at the time, it was just as perplexing, controversial, and revolutionary as the Internet is today.

The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. With the invention of the telegraph, the world of communications was forever changed. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over its wires. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought. The saga of the telegraph offers many parallels to that of the Internet in our own time, and is a remarkable episode in the history of technology.

* Illustrated throughout
* A masterful, lively blend of science and history, in the bestselling tradition of Longitude

"Fascinating...If you've ever hankered for a perspective on media Net hype, this book is for you."--Wired

"Sparkling."--Forbes

"Essential reading for those caught up in our own information revolution."--Christian Science Monitor

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Imagine an almost instantaneous communication system that would allow people and governments all over the world to send and receive messages about politics, war, illness, and family events. The government has tried and failed to control it, and its revolutionary nature is trumpeted loudly by its backers. The Internet? Nope, the humble telegraph fit this bill way back in the 1800s. The parallels between the now-ubiquitous Internet and the telegraph are amazing, offering insight into the ways new technologies can change the very fabric of society within a single generation. In The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage examines the history of the telegraph, beginning with a horrifically funny story of a mile-long line of monks holding a wire and getting simultaneous shocks in the interest of investigating electricity, and ending with the advent of the telephone. All the early "online" pioneers are here: Samuel Morse, Thomas Edison, and a seemingly endless parade of code-makers, entrepreneurs, and spies who helped ensure the success of this communications revolution. Fans of Longitude will enjoy another story of the human side of dramatic technological developments, complete with personal rivalry, vicious competition, and agonizing failures. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (October 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425171698
• ISBN-13: 978-0425171691
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #939,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Standage is digital editor at The Economist, overseeing the magazine's website, Economist.com, and its smartphone, tablet and e-reader editions. Before that he was business affairs editor, running the back half of the magazine, and he previously served as business editor, technology editor and science correspondent. Tom is also the author of five history books, including "An Edible History of Humanity" (2009), "A History of the World in Six Glasses" (2005), a New York Times bestseller, and "The Victorian Internet" (1998), described by the Wall Street Journal as a "dot-com cult classic". He writes the video-game column for Intelligent Life, The Economist's lifestyle magazine, is a regular commentator on BBC radio, and has written for other publications including the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times and Wired. He holds a degree in engineering and computer science from Oxford University, and is the least musical member of a musical family. He is married and lives in London with his wife and children, and is currently working on his next book, on the prehistory of social media.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An important book and a fun book September 9, 2007

By Tom Carpenter VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have written three books on Wireless networking and am about to start writing a fourth. Coming from this perspective, The Victorian Internet was both an excellent read and an enlightening one. It is true that we can get caught up in any new thing and think that it is going to drastically alter the world. Of course, those of use directly implementing the new thing always think it will alter teh world for the better. This book shines a light of reality on this thinking to make you realize that a new technology alone is not likely to save the world, though it can make it an easier place for many to live.

Many reviewers have stated their favorite story, so I will share mine. It's the opening story of the book. It begins, "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. Each monk held on end of a twenty-five-foot iron wire in each hand, connecting him to his neighbor on either side. Together, the monks and their connecting wires formed a line over a mile long."

The story goes on to reveal that Jean-Antoine Nollet induced a shock onto the wire to see if the monks would feel the shock at the same moment and indeed they did. This revealed to Nollet that electricity traveled at an extremely rapid speed and began the turning of the gears that led to electrical impulse-based communications (which we still use today in Ethernet and Wireless).

This book is filled with such stories and will certainly both entertain and inform you.

Tom Carpenter, Author: Wireless# Certificiation Official Study Guide

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars two hours of fun, fun, fun April 7, 2001

By Philip Greenspun

Format:Paperback

In the story of the world-wide telegraph system, built from the 1840s until 1900 when the telephone rose to supplant it, Standage develops fascinating parallels with the rise of the Internet. Western Union "insisted that its monopoly [on US telegraphy] was in everyone's interest, even if it was unpopular, because it would encourage standardization." Today's high-pressure startups have nothing on Thomas Edison who "locked his workforce in the workshop until they had finished building a large order of stock tickers." As with the Web, the true inventor, Samuel Morse, made "a respectable sum, though less than the fortunes amassed by the entrepreneurs who built empires on the back of his invention." Standage pairs modern pundits such as Nicholas Negroponte predicting that the Internet will bring about world peace with their 19th century equivalents predicting that the telegraph will enable a perfect understanding between governments and peoples and bring an end to wars. If you made big bucks in the dotcom world of the 1990s, page 205 may cause you a moment's reflection:

"The heyday of the telegrapher as a highly paid, highly skilled information worker was over; telegraphers' brief tenure as members of an elite community with master over a miraculous, cutting-edge technology had come to an end. As the twentieth century dawned, the telegraph's inventors had died, its community had crumbled, and its golden age had ended."

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Past and future... May 29, 2003

By FrKurt Messick HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The title of this book, 'The Victorian Internet,' refers to the 'communications explosion' that took place with the advent and expansion of telegraph wire communications. Prior to this, communication was notoriously slow, particularly as even postal communications were subject to many difficulties and could take months for delivery (and we complain today of the 'allow five days' statements on our credit cards billings!).

The parallels between the Victorian Internet and the present computerised internet are remarkable. Information about current events became relatively instantaneous (relative, that is, to the usual weeks or months that it once took to receive such information). There were skeptics who were convinced that this new mode of communication was a passing phase that would never take on (and, in a strict sense, they were right, not of course realising that the demise of the telegraph system was not due to the reinvigoration of written correspondence but due to that new invention, the telephone). There were hackers, people who tried to disrupt communications, those who tried to get on-line free illegally, and, near the end of the high age of telegraphing, a noticeable slow-down in information due to information overload (how long is this page going to take to download?? isn't such a new feeling after all).

The most interesting chapter to me is that entitled 'Love over the Wires' which begins with an account of an on-line wedding, with the bride in Boston and the groom in New York. This event was reported in a small book, Anecdotes of the Telegraph, published in London in 1848, which stated that this was 'a story which throws into the shade all the feats that have been performed by our British telegraph.' This story is really one of love and adventure, as the bride's father had sent the young groom away for being unworthy to marry his daughter, but on a stop-over on his way to England, he managed to get a magistrate and telegraph operator to arrange the wedding. The marriage was deemed to be legally binding.

A very interesting and remarkable story that perhaps would have been forgotten by history had history not set out to repeat itself with our modern internet.