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The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers Paperback – October 15, 1999

by Tom Standage (Author)

4.5 445 ratings

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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

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Berkley Trade
Publication date

October 15, 1999
Dimensions

5.56 x 0.62 x 7.6 inches
ISBN-10

0425171698
ISBN-13

978-0425171691
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"An inspired and utterly topical rediscovery of the emergence of the earliest modern communications technology. I recommend it highly." -- William Gibson, author of All Tomorrow's Parties

About the Author

Tom Standage is a journalist who has written about science and technology for many newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The Independent, and Wired. Former deputy editor of the technology section of The Daily Telegraph, he is now a science writer at The Economist in London. This is his first book. He lives in Greenwich, England.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley Trade (October 15, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0425171698
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0425171691
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.56 x 0.62 x 7.6 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,245,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,903 in History of Technology
- #11,170 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)

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4.5 445 ratings

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Tom Standage

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Tom Standage is deputy editor of The Economist, overseeing its strategy and output on digital platforms, including the web, apps, audio, video and social media. He joined The Economist in 1998 and previously served as Digital Editor, Business Affairs Editor, Business Editor, Technology Editor and Science Correspondent. He is a regular radio commentator and keynote speaker on technology trends, and takes a particular interest in the social and cultural impact of technology. Tom is also the author of six history books, including “Writing on the Wall: Social Media—The First 2,000 Years”; the New York Times bestsellers “A History of the World in Six Glasses” (2005) and “An Edible History of Humanity” (2009); and “The Victorian Internet” (1998), a history of the telegraph. His writing has appeared in other publications including the New York Times, the Guardian 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.

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Babycakes

Interesting read

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2023

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Very easy and interesting read.

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Grizzly Adams

Gossipy, Not Technical

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2023

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Interesting tale, well-written, but I was hoping for more science than anecdote. Still, tells the story of the telegraph and the challenge of getting a skeptical world to embrace a brilliant idea. I found it interesting that the telephone was invented accidentally while attempting to enhance the telegraph's message-sending capacity. Overall, fun to read.

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Stephen

A remarkable tale of the telegraph, and how it relates to us today.

Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2009

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This is a top-notch tale of the remarkable invention of the telegraph -- and how it blossomed from nascent experimental use in France, to the creation of Samuel Morse's electric telegraph which eventually interconnected the entire planet by the end of the 19th century. In all, "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage is a fascinating review of the history of the telegraph and how it parallels the Internet today.

Even the title of the book indicates that the Victorian era was when the telegraph's use was at its height. People used it then much as they use the Internet today: to communicate with family and friends, expedite commerce, seek romance ... and deceive the unwitting through scams.

We often think of the telecommunications revolution as being a primarily late-20th century innovation, but this book proves this is not so. In fact, if any group can lay claim to having to endure the greatest technological paradigm shift -- it would be our forebears from the mid to late 19th century.

For prior to this point, the fastest way in which information could travel was the speed of a charging horse or fast sailboat. However, with the creation of the first optical, then later electrical telegraph, what once would have taken months to ferry a message across vast distances was cut down to a few seconds.

Moreover, the seeds for many of the inventions and modern conveniences we take for granted now (i.e. the fax, telephone, Internet, etc.) are direct descendants of the telegraph and the pioneering spirit that caused it to undergo many improvements in its design. For example, the operating principle behind the telephones we use everyday was discovered quite accidentally when Alexander Graham Bell sought to improve upon the design and capacity of an existing telegraph. And the very word "network" itself derived from the "net-works" of telegraph cable which crisscrossed the globe. [The term "Internet" itself, comes from the telegraphic idea of "interconnected networks."]

This short book is a fun and fascinating read (which I often found hard to put down), showing that the telegraph and today's Internet have more in common than we know. Thus proving what wise King Solomon had already exclaimed thousands of years ago:

"That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said,
'See, this is new'?
It has already been in ancient times before us."

3 people found this helpful

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Trenton Bennett

History Repeats Itself

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2003

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Tom Standage is onto something. It seems that everything we know about the Internet today, we've already done before. The turn of this century was a lot like the turn of the last century.
"The Victorian Internet" is all about our world and the invention of the Telegraph. As cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson once pointed out, the telegraph was the world's first global digital network. It's when we started trying to push voice down the copper lines that we mucked things up.
In this book, you'll find technological wizardry, geek pioneers, global aspirations, long-distance romances, and online scams. You'll discover what 19th-Century chat was like. There are growing pains. We see fear for the future and fear of moral decline. The Telegraph represented a sudden, massive interconnection of people thousands of miles apart, and the effects of this overnight deluge of information is clear in reading. You have to remember that these were people used to feeling safe in their own homes, blissfully unaware of each other, and only vaguely informed of events going on in other countries.
Standage does a nice job of hitting on the hottest topics of our time, without hitting the reader over the head to make a point. Cybergeeks will love his stops at Cryptography, code, and the other programming-like solutions people came up with to solve their problems. Fans of history will be amused by the parallels between life then and now as "old media" learns to stop worrying and embrace "new media".
In a narrative style that resembles the British TV series "Connections", Standage shows us what each side of the Atlantic was up to, the race to connect the world, and the sheer determination and boundless optimism that made it all happen. There are also interesting tidbits along the way: we get facts about Samuel Morse and Thomas Edison that most history books ignore. There are anecdotes from 19th-century daily life that we can easily identify with today. All of it combines in a way that is easy to read, decently-paced, and fun to think about and discuss with others.
I give this book 5 stars for being clever with presentation and for keeping the various threads together without seeming fragmented. Tom Standage moves us through history without jumping around, and references earlier sections to remind us of where things are going. If you like history, technology, or even the geekier topics of machine logic, programming, and cryptography, this book makes an excellent read.

9 people found this helpful

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Michael

Interesting treatment of the subject

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2022

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Readable, well-written, accurate. Comparison of the telegraph to the internet is interesting, though at times overdone, I think. Not a particularly in-depth treatment of the subject, but a good overall view. If this accounts interests, I would suggest the reader see other titles on Morse, the Atlantic Cable, Edison, etc. that provide more detail on the subject. Of perhaps a dozen or so images and drawings in the book, a handful are of such abysmal quality that they are little more than blots of ink. The publisher should correct this or remove these entirely.

4 people found this helpful

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Cliente Amazon

Muito interessante, vale a leitura

Reviewed in Brazil on October 30, 2023

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Este livro conta a história do telégrafo, em termos mais leigos, não tanto voltado para engenheiros eletricistas.
No entanto as histórias mencionadas são muito boas, desde as dificuldades de implementação quanto a de aceitação pelo público

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Theo

really enjoyed, easy read, short

Reviewed in Spain on October 21, 2023

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very interesting topic, given how communication has sped up since the intro of the telegram, after being mostly flat for centuries prior. Well executed, not long, easy read, entertaining too, some good stories in there.

MD

Fascinating story about the origin of Telegraph

Reviewed in India on August 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

Loved the in-depth coverage of history of telegraph. Didn't realise telegraphs were a global network before internet arrived on the scene

Metropolitan Critic

Superb popular science

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2011

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Standage tells the story of the telegraph in this delightful short book. It opens with a chapter on the 'optical telegraph' - the signalling system based on a network of mutually visible towers which flourished particulaly in France. After this, it traces the decisive step made by Morse, Cooke and Wheatstone in harnessing electricity to convey messages. There are fascinating chapters on the sceptics who doubted the value of the new technology; the problems of inter-continental cable laying; alternative messaging techniques such as capsules shot through tubes with compressed air; the use of the electric telegraph by criminals as well as the police; online telegraphic romance; the hopes that instant communication would lead to international conflict resolution; and the growing realisation that in fact it was an invaluable military techonology.

Finally telegraphy is over-taken by telephony, which allows a greater rapidly of communication and requires no intermediaries. The book closes with some thought-provoking remarks as to how new and revolutionary the Internet really is.

Throughout the material is admirably selected and the writing witty and clear. It is also a self-effacing book: as far as could be seen, the word 'I' (in the sense of 'Tom Standage') appears exactly once - in the acknowledgements section. Strongly recommended. His book on planetary discovery (The Neptune File) is also superb.

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Very Interesting Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 15, 2023

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This is the second book by this author that I've read and like with his History of the World in Six Glasses, it's not over long and sticks to the point. There's not much here about the actual technology as such so if you want more on that you'll need to look elsewhere.

The main thrust without giving anything away, is how a step change in communication technology made a lasting change and it is certainly interesting to see the overblown claims about how the telegraph would enable world peace was so far wide of the mark. Despite knowing this, it didn't stop others making claims about similar outcomes as a result of the widespread use of the internet.

As we should all know, technology, in most cases, will not alter human behaviour in any profound way if those people don't have an open mind.

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