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The Victorian Internet

by Tom Standage

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 792 ratings · 139 reviews

The invention of the telegraph and the "online" pioneers who ensured the communications revolution.

Paperback, 240 pages

Published October 15th 1999 by Berkley Trade (first published 1998)

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Apr 12, 2013 Jacqueline O. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history, science, victorian

I loved this book! I highly, highly recommend it. The Victorian Internet is an excellent history of the telegraph. But it is not simply a fact-and-name filled book of inventions and advances. It's a social history - focusing on the social impact and societal change that the telegraph brought to the world. And, cleverly he compares the changes the telegraph brought to the Victorian world (especially in England) to changes the Internet has brought about today. This makes a study of the history of...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Adam Wiggins rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fun read about the heyday of the electric telegraph (circa 1850 - 1880).

Tidbits:

- The original telegraph system was visual, not electric. Towers were built on tall hills that signaled each other and passed messages along. This is why there are still places named "Telegraph Hill." What I usually think of as a telegraph (an operator sitting at a keypad tapping out morse code) didn't require any particular line of sight.

- Prior to the invention of the telegraph, boarding a train right after committ...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Philip rated it 5 of 5 stars

After reading a number of the reviews I am prone to think that a number of people missed the larger point. For all of the hyping of the internet in the mid to late 90's, it wasn't as drastic a change to everyday lives as was the electric telegraph. Where it took weeks to months for a message to cross oceans or continents before the telegraph, it took minutes after. The phone and internet just changed the amount that could be communicated. The telegraph truly interconnected the world and laid the...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Converse rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, technology, journalism

On-line wedding are old news. They were first done via electrical telegraph. This is one of the many parallel between the internet and one of the oldest telecommunications technologies. The changes wrought by the electrical telegraph were greater than those brought about by the internet, because the telegraph was developed in societies that lacked an already existing, near-instantaneous means of communications.

In the decades prior to the electrical telegraph, a number of European countries had...more

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Nov 13, 2012 Randy Mcdonald rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, cultural-studies, alternate-history, science-fiction

Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet, a historical survey of the telegraph from its origins in the optical telegraph of Revolutionary France to the beginning of its eclipse by the telephone in the 1880s, makes a superficially convincing argument that the telegraph fostered a tight-knit culture among mid-19th century telegraphists comparable to contemporary Internet culture. Before the invention of the teleprinter, telegraph operators did constitute a highly-skilled class of information workers...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Jillian L rated it 3 of 5 stars

"The Victorian Internet," written by Tom Standage, is a good source of information for the history behind the telegraph. It was really slow at parts of the book, but it is a good read. "The Victorian Internet," gives a really clear, descriptive view on the journey of how Samuel Morse invented and succeeded making the telegraph. Morse even accomplished making the telegraph line that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He had many struggles with inventing the telegraph but there were also many rewards. H...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Olivia I rated it 3 of 5 stars

‘The Victorian Internet’ by Tom Standage was about the creation, evolution, and impact that the telegraph had on society. Communication is a part of everyday life and before the telegraph, the speed that a message could be sent was limited. Jean-Antoin Nollet, a French Scientist, helped Samuel Morse expand on his invention because of his experiments that he held. The evolution of the communication line began in 1837 as the first practical telegraph was completed. Merely twenty-eight years later...more

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Apr 05, 2011 Matt Hines rated it 4 of 5 stars

I just finished this wonderful little volume which chronicles the rise and fall of "The Victorian Intenet," the telegraph. Like many others, I knew about Samuel Morse and the Morse Code, of the laying of the Atlantic cable and how the telegraph laid the groundwork for modern communications unlike anything else in history.

But what I didn't know is how very much alike it was to our Internet. They had "chat rooms" of sorts, they had their hackers and identity theives. Mr. Standage also tells a few...more I just finished this wonderful little volume which chronicles the rise and fall of "The Victorian Intenet," the telegraph. Like many others, I knew about Samuel Morse and the Morse Code, of the laying of the Atlantic cable and how the telegraph laid the groundwork for modern communications unlike anything else in history.

But what I didn't know is how very much alike it was to our Internet. They had "chat rooms" of sorts, they had their hackers and identity theives. Mr. Standage also tells a few fascinating stories of how some people found love on the wires. One story stands out about a young army telegrapher in remote New Mexico who married his fiance at the fort, while the minister and the bride's father were 650 miles away in San Diego. He tells of how bored telegraph operators played chess, exchanged jokes and recipes, and got to know people outside their hometown that without the device would not have been possible.

The telegraph had much more of an impact on that generation than most other technologies have on this one. Before Morse and the other pioneers of telegraphy, news was limited to an area that might be no more than a few days ride away. News of foreign wars, trade regulations, and even news from the far corners of our far flung republic could be weeks old by the time it reached decision makers. One wonders if the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 would have been fought, as a peace treaty was signed weeks before this famous battle was waged.

Between 1844, when Morse sent his famous phrase over the wires, to Alexander Bell's utterances on his new telephone, the world changed drastically because of the twin catalysts of telegraphy and the railroad. Messages could now be sent from London, and it would reach it's destination in Bombay four minutes later. A New York merchant could receive an order to export flour to London, and in turn issue orders to his warehouse in San Francisco to send it eastward to help fulfill the order. During the American Civil War, President Lincoln knew the events unfolding in far away battles almost as soon as they occurred- something that had never happened in previous conflicts. And just like we had a dot com boom, where the opportunities were online, so they had a telegraph boom, where a man could make something of himself in this new fangled world.

I have read widely in history, and every once in a while a book crosses my path which excites my intellect. This book entertains, informs, and demonstrates once again that indeed "there is nothing new under the sun." It just is updated. (less)

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Mar 07, 2011 Laurie rated it 4 of 5 stars

While the term ‘Victorian Internet’ conjures up visions of a steampunk alternate history, the invention and spread of the telegraph system in the 19th century had much the same effect on society then as the internet has had in our own time. It turned a world where messages took weeks to cross the Atlantic to one where it took mere minutes. It changed the speed of business and of war. New forms of crime sprang up to take advantage of the new technology and encryption was developed to deal with th...more

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Oct 24, 2010 Eric Goldman rated it 5 of 5 stars

The book discusses the history of the telegraph. The book explains the technologies preceding the telegraph, the battles between the inventors of the telegraph, the telegraph's role in spawning new technological innovations (and creating enormous wealth for some of those folks) and the ways that the telegraph did--and did not--change society.

Its thesis is that many phenomena we associate with a global electronic network first occurred in the 19th century, not the 20th, which has made our celebra...more The book discusses the history of the telegraph. The book explains the technologies preceding the telegraph, the battles between the inventors of the telegraph, the telegraph's role in spawning new technological innovations (and creating enormous wealth for some of those folks) and the ways that the telegraph did--and did not--change society.

Its thesis is that many phenomena we associate with a global electronic network first occurred in the 19th century, not the 20th, which has made our celebration of the Internet's novelty (a topic at its zenith in 1998 when the book was published) ahistorical. The book thoroughly delivers on this thesis. One particular anecdote really hammered this point home. The book talks about a telegraph-mediated "online wedding" that first occurred...before 1848. (Indeed, the book "Wired Love" was published in 1879 and an article "The Dangers of Wired Love" ran in 1886). Yet, numerous newspaper articles from the mid-1990s marveled at Internet-mediated weddings as if they were completely unprecedented.

More generally, the book broadly makes the case that some things never change. For example, the book describes the arms race between telegraph companies establishing pricing schemes to curb attempts to send more information at a lower cost, just to have telegraph senders coming up with new gaming strategies. The book discussed the paranoia of major institutions in response to telegraphy, including governments that sought to control the use of cryptography in telegraphy and newspapers that assumed that the telegraph would destroy their business. (In the latter case, the newspapers adapted and thrived in response to telegraphy). The book also described how the telegraph contributed to feelings of information overload.

The book ends on a bittersweet note. It observes that people thought that the borderless telegraph communication network would contribute to world peace by breaking down barriers to communication. It didn't. If anything, the telegraph played an important role in 19th century imperialism and contributed to some of the bloodiest wars in history. Similarly, 150 years later, many similarly romanticize how the Internet can make the world a better place. Perhaps the Internet is truly different from the telegraph in this respect, or perhaps, we are just ahistorically proclaiming the latest technology innovation as our savior. As the book says, "That the telegraph was so widely seen as a panacea is perhaps understandable. The fact that we are still making the same mistake today is less so."

From my perspective, the only thing "missing" from this pithy and efficient book was a more thorough discussion of how lawmakers reacted to the rise of the telegraph. I would like to know more about how 19th century regulators coped with--or, more likely, freaked out about--the technological assumptions changed by the telegraph.

It seems safe to assume that some legislators misunderstood the technological underpinnings of telegraphy. The book gives numerous examples of how people didn't understand that the telegraph sent only electronic signals and wasn't a teleportation technology, such as the story of a woman in 1870 who sought to "telegraph" sauerkraut to her son. Again, some things never change; in 2003, a member of the House of Lords had a similar misunderstanding about spam. [the exact quote: "Will the Minister explain how it is that an inedible tinned food can become an unsolicited email, bearing in mind that some of us wish to be protected from having an email?"]

In this vein, the book offered one possible explanation for Sen. Stevens' explanation that the Internet is a "series of tubes." [the exact quote from Wired: "the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."] Many telegraph operators built out a network of pneumatic tubes to move messages over short distances because this was quicker and more accurate for those messages. So perhaps Sen. Stevens was thinking of the telegraph when he referred to the "series of tubes."

The book was published before Western Union sent its last telegram. At the time I knew this represented the end of an important era, but after reading this book I better understand the significance of that event. Some day, someone will send the very last TCP/IP enabled http message...an event that will also probably pass with a whimper, not a bang.(less)

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May 20, 2009 Greg Pettit rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library, non-fiction

Another shallow, quick, interesting read. I enjoyed this light history of the telegraph, and there certainly were interesting parallels with the Internet. However, there also seemed to be several gaps in the narrative.

For the most part, I liked how Standage simplified his description of the development and evolution of telegraphy. The early pre-electric history and problem-solving stories were particularly interesting. But with all the detail put into explaining some solutions, it was frustratin...more

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Dec 09, 2011 Ilya rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Victorian Age had its own Internet, with packet switching, domain names, encryption for secure communication, payload compression and error correction. It was called the electrical telegraph. It was invented in the 1830s by several inventors in Europe and the United States, the most important of whom was Samuel F. Morse. Telegraph lines made a world-wide web; laying the lines made a company making insulated cables from copper and gutta-percha, the resin of a tree from the Malay Peninsula, ve...more

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Mar 22, 2011 Bookseller Cate rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I came across this title when I read the author's A History of the World in Six Glasses but have only now made the time to read it.

It is what it purports to be: the story of the telegraph with heavy comparisons to the internet. Indeed, the writers of one of my favourite TV shows (The Murdoch Mysteries) may have been inspired by this book when they wrote an episode involving characters who are "telegraphers", illustrating many of the same points that Standage makes -- and containing the same com...more

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Nov 27, 2012 David Dinaburg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"In 1844...sending a message from London to Bombay and back took ten weeks. Within 30 years...messages could be telegraphed from London to Bombay and back in as little as four minutes. 'Time itself is telegraphed out of existence,' declared the Daily Telegraph of London. The world had shrunk further and faster than it ever had before.”

Each subsequent iteration of remote transpersonal networking creates a feeling, at least in me, that the world has yet again shifted on its axis: telephones to ce...more

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Jan 30, 2013 Doc Kinne rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book was good, and largely lived up to its billing, but in the end I liked "The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and Its Predecessors in the United States" better. While the thrust of the book - that the telegraph was the Victorian equiv. of the Internet - can be supported, truthfully that supposition is somewhat elementary since both are fundamental communication devices. So the subject of the book is somewhat of a, "Duh!"

What was more interesting was the very, very end when specif...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Phil Scovis rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hackers and Chat-rooms? Well, some people committed crimes with the telegraph, and operators made small talk in their spare time. I suspect that telegraph really did bring about all sorts of hacking and cyber-crime and online community. But if so, this book explores it poorly.

As a straightforward history of the telegraph,the book is comprehensive and detailed, while still being a breezy read. It especially illuminates the radical changes to society and worldview that the telegraph brought about...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Pete rated it 4 of 5 stars

I got this book for Christmas, and read it in 3 days. A really interesting history of the development of the Telegraph, and the amazing parallels between its development and that of the internet. I think a major point made by this book is that with the steam engine, telegraph and electricity the 19th Century was changing a much faster pace then they are today. And it also point to how the technology of today stands on the shoulders of giants. He throws in a lot of good side stories that demonstr...more

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May 10, 2012 Lora rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, history

One of these days I'll remember to pay attention to which edition of a book I'm listing. I read the later edition, which added some notes at the end philosophizing about the internet. Over all the book was good- I could even recommend it for a kid to read. The history of the telegraph and reflections on the internet were the focus. The personalities were described without detailed analysis of their irrelevant sexual orientations. It was just basic history. The social aspects of the rise of the t...more

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Feb 01, 2010 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read2010, history, pop-science

You know you want to read all about how the telegraph ushered in the information age, "wired love" and all! It's fun to follow the trail of inventive genius and the resulting cultural shockwaves. The things humans can do! Loved that every time I had difficulty picturing the mechanisms of one contraption or another, I turned the page only to find a helpful historical diagram!

The comparisons with our modern internet are still apt 10 years on. Maybe more so, from our vantage point of web 2.0 or wh...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Coy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

A nice and easy book describing the telegraph. History is an amazing thing. The telegraph was the first invention that really brought people together and this book does a good job of showing how it did that and how it changed society. Just like there are internet romances now, there were telegraph romances back then. Just how there are abbreviations for phrases like "c u l8r" there were short abbreviations for words back then. The more things change, the more they stay the same. No matter what i...more

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Sep 25, 2009 Rose rated it 5 of 5 stars

Steam-powered e-love affairs! Hapless Scottish fisherman trying to serve gutta perch telegraph wire tubs for supper! Telegraph operators flooding the wires of the noobs just like kids flood chat rooms! Plus lots of little-known facts. I had no idea the first telegraphs were optical, or how hard it really was to put a line across oceans, or that codes were illegal... This book was funny and enlightening and just about the best thing you could read if you're a steampunk fan looking for some actual...more

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Nov 21, 2009 Jacqueline rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

What a surprisingly fun historical account of the development, uses, and effects of the telegraph. Standage strung together an interesting narrative which made for an enjoyable and easy (non-academic/jargony/theoretical) read. It's great for anyone looking for an overview of the telegraph or a starting place for understanding the social developments/effects.

It really is amazing how much the development, uses, users, effects, and discourses of the telegraph parallel the internet. Everything from...more

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May 06, 2011 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars

I had a delightful time reading the Victorian Internet by Tom Statndage. The text is well researched, interesting, and (dare I say) fun to read. Standage does a good job sorting through a complicated and sometimes 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 interesting but at times will overshadow the unique culture and sense of excitement the...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Hans-Peter Merz rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is really a wonderfull book. I recommend it wholeheartedly. Tom Standage shows how the telegraph found its way against a predecessing technology, technological and financial problems and the scepticism of that kind of people always asking whether we really do need that new thing.

Most important: Tom Standage shows that not the internet of our days was the great leap forward in communication - it was the telegraph! With this technology information was first time on large scale instantaneously...more

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May 21, 2010 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars

Standage's short 1998 volume about the social history of the telegraph (and his comparison with the Internet a almost century and a half later) is interesting, and stands up pretty well -- as far as it goes.

Unfortunately, "as far as it goes" is the problem. Details (on technicalities of telegraph design and operation, on pricing and revenues, on administrative and legislative responses to telegraph technology) are thin and spotty, seemingly there only to advance a broad argument. That's a shame,...more

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Apr 18, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

My friend, Rebecca recommended this to me, and it's probably the first nonfiction book I've read in at least a few years. It was great. The basic point is that nothing we invent could have the same impact on communication that the telegraph did. There's a lot of information that compares the telegraph with the internet. There were online romances, skepticism and fear of the telegraph just as these things happen online, now. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the history...more

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Sep 06, 2011 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Although the book is starting to feel in need for an update, it's a very interesting history of the telegraph system, concentrating mostly on the U.S. network. At times I felt like the telegraph/Internet parallels were drawn a bit too heavily and felt a little forced, but if you put yourself back into your mid-90s shoes, when the Internet was The Greatest And Most Unique Thing Ever Built By Man Ever, it's a bit more understandable why the author makes the point so hard.

I would really like to rea...more

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Aug 23, 2011 tuttle88 rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Interesting and entertaining but overall disappointing. Its basically a brief overview of the history of the telegraph and it rushes through a lot. Its also almost entirely centered on America and Britain with a little France it leaves out the challenges of building and staffing telegraph offices in remote areas. He mentioned places like India and Africa but doesn't go into how the technology was used as part of the wider colonisation effort which would have been interesting. This book was kind...more

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Mar 28, 2012 B Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

I was surprised at how fascinating I found this book, the story of the first global communications network. Today's internet closely parallels the growth of the telegraph, at least as it was in Europe, where tariffs were kept low, so it was used much more by the general public than. In the US, higher rates kept it more for business use. The public understanding was sometimes amusing. Some thought the wires were hollow and messages were sucked through them. "It's just tubes!" Sound familiar? Atte...more

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May 09, 2013 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars

An excellent overview of the challenges of communication only recently overcome - as the author points out, both Julius Caesar and George Washington, despite living centuries apart, were limited by the speed at which news could travel - only as fast as a horse or a ship could carry it. There are some historians who believe the War of 1812 may have been avoidable with faster communication, although this is highly speculative. However there's no question but that fast communication, which we now t...more An excellent overview of the challenges of communication only recently overcome - as the author points out, both Julius Caesar and George Washington, despite living centuries apart, were limited by the speed at which news could travel - only as fast as a horse or a ship could carry it. There are some historians who believe the War of 1812 may have been avoidable with faster communication, although this is highly speculative. However there's no question but that fast communication, which we now take for granted, was a bit of a pipe dream even in the 18th century. Even in my own lifetime, the idea of a cell phone, much less a video phone, was something you saw on The Jetsons or Star Trek but never actually expected to be real. But if you imagine how we feel about a crisis that affects loved ones in faraway places - for example, Hurricane Sandy, the Japanese earthquake the destruction of the WTC, the Boston Marathon bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing - and how desperately we want news to be sure that the people we love are safe - how every minute we wait for news seems intolerable - now imagine waiting months for the same news to arrive. That was one of the motivations for building telegraph systems, although, as it turned out, military, diplomatic, and commercial interests ended up using it far more often than individuals. Nonetheless, for a brief time, the telegraph was the marvel of the 19th century, and telegraph operators who could quickly transcribe Morse code were highly in demand. This is a fascinating tale about the march of progress - the years between 1800 and 1960 arguably saw the greatest technological developments in the Western world. If you consider the young Samuel Seymour witnessing President Lincoln's assisination in 1865, and then, towards the end of his life, being interviewed on CBS television in 1956, you can imagine the astonishing speed at which the technological developments changed the world. This is a must-read for anyone entranced with this marvel of the "march of progress" in the Western world. (less)

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About Tom Standage

Tom Standage is a journalist and author from England. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked as a science and technology writer for The Guardian, as the business editor at The Economist, has been published in Wired, The New York Times, and The Daily Telegraph, and has published five books, including The Victorian Internet[1][2]. This book explores the historical development of the telegrap...more

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“The exchange of consent being given by the electric flash, they were thus married by telegraph.” — 1 person liked it

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