216 pages
English language
Published 1998 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Limited.
the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century's on-line pioneers
216 pages
English language
Published 1998 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Limited.
The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. From the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet, whose experiments proved that electricity could be transmitted over great distances, to Samuel F. B.
Morse, who developed the first practical electric telegraph in 1837, to Thomas Edison, who began his career in the telegraph business and proposed to his wife by tapping Morse code on her hand, Tom Standage tells a colorful tale of scientific discovery, technological cunning, personal rivalry, and cutthroat competition.