The Victorian Internet

Fülszöveg

••SCIENCE/HISTORY— ----•«
"Fascinating If you've ever hankered for a perspective on media Net hype, this book is for you."— Wired
For centuries people communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried and failed to develop speedier messs^ng devices. But in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention—the electric telegraph—^shrank the world more quickly than ever before.
A colorful tale of scientific discovery and technological cunning. The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraphs creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. By 1865 telegraph cables spaimed continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by... Tovább

Fülszöveg

••SCIENCE/HISTORY— ----•«
"Fascinating If you've ever hankered for a perspective on media Net hype, this book is for you."— Wired
For centuries people communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried and failed to develop speedier messs^ng devices. But in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention—the electric telegraph—^shrank the world more quickly than ever before.
A colorful tale of scientific discovery and technological cunning. The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraphs creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. By 1865 telegraph cables spaimed continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by its skeptics. And attitudes toward everything fi-om new^ gathering to war had to be completely rethought.
The telegraph unleashed the greatest revolution in communications since the development of the printing press. Its saga offers many parallels to that of the Internet in our own time—and is a fascinating episode in the history of technology.
"Sparkling."—Forbes
"Essential reading for those caught up in our own information revolution."—Christian Science Monitor Vissza