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How the World Was One

Arthur C. Clarke

3.99 · Rating details · 129 ratings · 20 reviews

Clarke, the 50 million-copy bestselling science fiction visionary who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, addresses the rapid transformation of our society spurred by great leaps in communication technology. From submarine cables to fiber optics to neutrino and tachyon (faster than light) communications, he traces the global changes these innovations left or will leave in their ...more

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Hardcover, 296 pages

Published June 1st 1992 by Bantam

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Mar 21, 2019 Carmelo Medina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Un excelente libro en el que se repasa toda la historia de las telecomunicaciones desde sus inicios. Está tan bien escrito y cuenta episodios tan poco conocidos que muchas veces parece una novela de aventuras, lo que añade más valor a la manera de hacer didáctica de Clarke. Incluye algún relato suyo sobre el tema que ayuda a contextualizar las distintas tecnologías y sus usos según la época en la que fueron escritos... Un libro de obligada lectura para los amantes de la ingeniería y que ...more

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Aug 18, 2018 Betawolf rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, nonfiction, technology

The mad bastards actually did it. It took four tries, and staggering sums of money, but they did it. Two ships -- one of them wooden -- rendezvoused in the middle of the Atlantic, took hold of two ends of a giant copper cable, and with a single escort each, daring the hazards of storm, shipping, and simple snags, spooled it out between them from Ireland to Newfoundland. They barely even understood how the telegraph cables worked (and this line wouldn't last long) but they bridged the New and Old ...more

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Dec 11, 2014 Zac rated it really liked it

This is really five short books sandwiched together into one medium-length book. The first book is about the laying of the transatlantic cable in the 19th century. The second book is about telephony and radio. Books three, four, and five are a grab-bag of essays about satellite technology, fiber-optic cable

The first book is as good as historical engineering nonfiction gets. I read the entire thing in a night and a day, carrying it with me from place to place. I read it on my couch, I read it at This is really five short books sandwiched together into one medium-length book. The first book is about the laying of the transatlantic cable in the 19th century. The second book is about telephony and radio. Books three, four, and five are a grab-bag of essays about satellite technology, fiber-optic cable

The first book is as good as historical engineering nonfiction gets. I read the entire thing in a night and a day, carrying it with me from place to place. I read it on my couch, I read it at the train station, I read it at the dentist's office (in the waiting room). If I had been mugged on the street while I was reading this book, I would have absentmindedly handed over my wallet while continuing to read. The first book explains the conception of the idea of submarine telegraphy to connect the Old World to the New and its execution. This is the story of the Atlantic Telegraph company, and comprehends the rivalry between Wildman Whitehouse and William Thompson (Lord Kelvin), Kelvin's invention of the mirror galvanometer, Kelvin's coinage of the term "data rate" to describe the rate at which a message could be transmitted down the length of the cable, two failed attempts to lay cable and one success that included the rescue and repair of one of the earlier, failed cables. I urge anyone interested in the early history of computer networking to read this book.

Books three, four, and five are a grab-bag of essays (and one unwelcome, longueur-filled short story) in which Clarke writes about his contributions to the field of satellite communications and speculates about the future of communications technology. In it, Clarke displays his worst writerly side: by attempting to be cool, he becomes obsequious. He committed the same offense in 3001, when Frank Poole makes a dreadful, unfunny reference to Batman, clearly thinks that it is a terribly witty joke, and then behaves dismissively toward a confused 31st-century man for not understanding it.

The last three parts of this book (books three, four, and five, as I have called them) are filled to bursting with information, despite their cloying tone and disorganized presentation. ...more

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Jul 29, 2017 Obed M. Parlapiano rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, technology, history, non-fiction

This is a magnificent history book. It's surprising how little you think of things that work all around you but you never see.

In "How the world Was One" Arthur C. Clarke, one of the "Big 3" sci-fy writers of his time, explains how the world went from sending messages via messenger boys and horses and waiting for days, months or even years for a reply, to sending messages via telegraphs that took minutes.

The book is very well formulated, and even though it's composed of Clarke's many different ...more

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Nov 28, 2016 Diego González rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: no-ficcion, historia, internet

Breve historia de cómo las redes de comunicaciones envolvieron el mundo y cualquier parte del planeta pasó a estar a minutos de cualquier otro lugar gracias a los cables. El libro consta de dos partes de calidad desigual. La primera, la prodigiosa historia de los primeros cables telegráficos trasatlánticos, es formidable. Es cierto que la historia en sí es tan maravillosa que a poco que un narrador sepa juntar un par de frases le sale un relato fabuloso, pero Clarke además lo hace genial (no así ...more

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Jan 20, 2018 Capri Caviedes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Para los amantes de las telecomunicaciones, una historia (sin detalle) de la evolución de los sistemas de telecomunicaciones desde el telégrafo hasta el satélite; toma el tema de fibra óptica pero sin entrar en profundidad. Es interesante lo que se menciona sobre la capacidad de elaborar sistemas de comunicación basados en neutrinos u ondas gravitacionales.

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Jun 04, 2019 Enrique Jiménez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Magnífico libro, lleno de humor y buenas historias (algunas ciertamente épicas), que repasa desde sus inicios la historia de las telecomunicaciones, desde el telégrafo y los primeros cables submarinos, pasando por los satélites de comunicaciones y otros inventos. Se ha quedado un poco desfasado por el año (1992) en que fue publicado. Aun así, absolutamente recomendable.

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Sep 25, 2017 Caolan McMahon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Hard to rate this one. The first parts about laying the transatlantic telegraph cables are really great and worth the price alone, after that I quickly got bored and stopped reading. Looking at the other reviews on here I'm justified in not suffering to the end.

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Nov 27, 2018 Esteban Parraos rated it liked it · review of another edition

Muy emocionantes, el principio histórico y el final visionario.

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Jan 09, 2019 William rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Interesantisimo libro de A. C. Clarke en el que repasa los grandes hitos que marcaron el inicio de la comunicación global.

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May 17, 2017 Duffy rated it liked it

Echoing what a lot of people have already said, the first two parts are really good, the last part is quite a slog by comparison. 4 starts for parts 1 and 2, 2 stars for the 3rd part.

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Nov 30, 2015 Tom Lee rated it really liked it

An interesting and pleasantly conversational nonfiction account of how global networks were first achieved. The book has two parts, and their quality differs.

First is the story of undersea cables and the incredible feats of Victorian era engineering that made them possible. As Clarke observes, this was the last era of intelligent amateurs making okay guesses about scientific problems, then achieving success through trial and error. That this approach could deliver achievements as awe-inspiring An interesting and pleasantly conversational nonfiction account of how global networks were first achieved. The book has two parts, and their quality differs.

First is the story of undersea cables and the incredible feats of Victorian era engineering that made them possible. As Clarke observes, this was the last era of intelligent amateurs making okay guesses about scientific problems, then achieving success through trial and error. That this approach could deliver achievements as awe-inspiring as instantaneous transatlantic communication is amazing. Clarke tells the story succinctly and in surprisingly entertaining fashion, particularly when one considers that the story boils down to a series of mostly-indistinguishable business ventures (some of which eventually worked).

There were interesting problems related to making the cable strong, conductive, properly insulated, and deploying it efficiently. When they began, the engineers didn't even realize that signals propagate through a submerged cable differently than they do when it's suspended in air! A number of scientific luminaries like Lord Kelvin drop in to play major parts in achieving eventual success.

The second part of the story involves communication satellites -- comsats -- and Clarke is very close to these events. Arguably too close.

The problem is this: the earth is curved. A radio signal won't naturally bend around that curve, putting a limit on how far it can reach. Shortwave signals can bounce off the ionosphere, ping-ponging their way around the world. But the ionosphere is an unreliable partner, and shortwave signals can't easily cover a large area. Different radio frequencies can pass through the ionosphere and into space, but from there they normally keep on going.

Clarke himself authored the canonical four-page paper proposing the use of satellites in geosynchronous orbit for radio relaying: parking a satellite along the equator at just the right orbital height and speed such that it remains stationary relative to a spot on the ground. His paper (included in the appendix) doesn't seem hugely rigorous, but he does run the numbers to show that the transmission power levels and necessary rocket specifications are plausible.

The paper became the original reference for an extremely important idea, even as huge amounts of work remained to be done in implementing it. Clarke had worked as a radar operator during WWII, but it seems to have been his position in the science fiction firmament that let his ideas freely diffuse into engineering circles. That paper was the end of his engineering contributions to comsats, but he spent many years giving honorary speeches about satellite communication and sitting on the corporate boards of various satellite industry players. And though he evinces a consistent humility in his writing, much of the content of the comsat portion of the book consists of reproductions of those speeches. These are not perfectly suited to book form, and sometimes they even include repeated anecdotes. A fresh approach to the material would have worked better. But one can forgive an old man for not mustering the will to tell these stories -- which he had been telling for decades -- yet again.

There is one interesting aspect to this, though, which is the degree to which Clarke and other comsat originators anticipated the media trends they would jump-start: specifically, the coarsening of media that its democratization would produce (he reprints an amusingly dour short story about the Soviets winning the propaganda war with satellite-broadcast pornography); and the trade-offs between alleviating human suffering and global cultural homogenization.

Incidentally, John Pierce of Bell Labs makes frequent appearances in the book -- both as one of the driving forces behind the earliest comsats and as a friend and amateur science fiction author -- and his Signals (cowritten with A. Michael Noll) is an excellent companion book, diving into many of the relevant technical questions while remaining accessible and basically coffee-table compatible.
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Jan 21, 2013 Jim rated it it was ok

I read the book based on references in Cryptonomicon (Cryptonomicon). The sections about the history of the undersea cables was very interesting and informative. I may have learned a little more that I wanted to know but Clarke does his usual great job of holding the reader's interest. The rest of the book was (to me a least) not very compelling. COMSAT history is fascinating but the the book basically (if pretend modestly) gives most of the credit to Clarke. Still, if there is interest in the ...more

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Jun 07, 2009 Kimberly rated it it was amazing

This book is a fascinating look into the physical realities of communication: from the first undersea cables for telegraphs to geosynchronous satellites (which Mr. Clarke posited in a SF story many years before they became reality). I found this book through a fabulous article by Neal Stephenson on the difficulties of laying new fiber-optic cable through the world that appeared in Wired in the late 90s.

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Dec 24, 2016 Ron rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, science, own

This would have easily been a five star book, but the historical adventure of the first 2/3 leads into a lot of speculation that seems dated in 2011 (the book was written in 1991). Fortunately, he reprints some of his excellent speeches from the era that contain a few charming motes of wisdom that definitely apply to today's culture of hyper-information.

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Apr 18, 2013 Luke rated it liked it

Shelves: history

A curious history of transatlantic communications, from telegraph to satellite, by the sci-fi author who is given some credit for the idea of communication by satellite. A little disjointed and dated.

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Jan 06, 2012 J.D. rated it really liked it

The first part of this book, which documents the laying of submarine cable, is very suspenseful and interesting. The section on satellites, markedly less so. But all in all a good history of the communications industry.

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Jul 10, 2015 Ignacio rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Un libro que deberían hacernos leer nada más poner un pie en la escuela de teleco. Fascinante y evocador.

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Dec 31, 2014 Dean Prichard rated it liked it

The undersea cable part is great, but the rest is only so-so.

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About Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke

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Arthur Charles Clarke was one of the most important and influential figures in 20th century science fiction. He spent the first half of his life in England, where he served in World War Two as a radar operator, before emigrating to Ceylon in 1956. He is best known for the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he co-created with the assistance of Stanley Kubrick.

Clarke was a graduate of ...more