Tom Standage: The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers (1998)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1800s, history of technology, networks, technology, telegraph
For thousands of years people had communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried to develop speedier messaging devices. Then, in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention–the telegraph–nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before, or since. This book 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 to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. By 1865 telegraph cables spanned continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another, giving rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. The benefits of the network were hyped by advocates and dismissed by skeptics. Government regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought.
Publisher Walker & Company, New York, 1998
ISBN 0802713424, 9780802713421
227 pages
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PDF (1998 edition, PDF)
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Laszlo Solymar: Getting the Message: A History of Communications (1999)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of communications, history of technology, media history, technology, telegraph, telegraphy, telephone
The past century has seen developments in communications technology that rival those in any other field of human activity. Significant advances are made every year, and the impact on our day-to-day lives has been tremendous. Getting the message explores the fascinating history of communications, starting with ancient civilizations, the Greeks and Romans, then leading through the development of the electric telegraph, and up to the present day with e-mail and cellular phones. In clear, non-technical language the book explains the details of each new development while interweaving ideas from politics, economics, and cultural history. The book concludes with a look at the possible future developments and how they may further transform how we live. Lavishly illustrated and including many original illustrations, the book is an informative and highly entertaining guide to this lively field.
Published by Oxford University Press, 1999
ISBN 0198503334, 9780198503330
311 pages
Key terms: optical fibres, waveguide, carrier wave, AT&T, field effect transistor, integrated circuits, Morse Code, capacitor, Minitel, Second Industrial Revolution, personal computers, electromagnetic waves, p-n junction, Bell Laboratories, Robert Noyce, Poldhu, Claude Chappe, pulse code modulation, teleprinter, semaphore
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