The Victorian Internet : the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century's online pioneers

Before the Internet, before the television, radio and telephone there was the telegraph… Over the course of a few years of Queen Victoria’s reign, this new communications technology annihilated distance and shrank the world faster than ever before. The international telegraph network revolutionised business practice and gave rise to new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over its cables. Its benefits were hyped by its advocates and dismissed by sceptics. Governments tried and failed to regulate it. Meanwhile out on the wires, a technological subculture with its own customs and vocabulary was establishing itself. Does all this sound familiar…? This is the story of the men and women who were the earliest pioneers of the on-line frontier, and the global network they created – a network that was in effect the Victorian Internet.