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The Victorian Internet
The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers
Tom Standage

Reviews of The Victorian Internet

Featured in Wall Street Journal Weekend as one of the best books to consult when asking what the internet means for business. “This dot-com cult classic...” tops their FIVE BEST column.

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

"Standage's story is rich with anecdotes, bustling with a cast of idealists and eccentrists." –BookPage

"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, Amazon.com

"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.—Publishers Weekly

"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— Library Journal

"The book's retelling of the invention of telegraphy is racy and popularized but reliable. Its author, the British science journalist Tom Standage, presents no original research or new information. But he treats familiar persons and events from the less familiar perspective of the Internet.... The Victorian Internet does not ask to be taken for more than History Lite, and makes an entertaining primer on a complex subject of increasing interest."— The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Kenneth Silverman

"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, Booklist

"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) —Kirkus Reviews

"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 Tom Standage