Rating: 
Summary: From the Applied Science Sketchbook, but ...
Review: ... Can You be Sure it's True?Standage does for the telegraph what the "How and Why Wonder Books" used to do: outline the history and science of a topic in a basic yet interesting format (though their illustrations were superior). The pitfalls are the same too: my How and Why Wonder Book of Space Travel told me that an aerospace engineer was called a "celestial mechanic", and I believed it. It took me years to discover that it sounded more like a job description for the Supreme Being ... Standage says the telegraph first saw the light of day as an optical device constructed by French inventors in 1791, later adopted by the Admiralty in England and by the French state. I wonder what English forces, who used the various Beacons from the fourteenth century on to signal to troops details of the threat of invaders, and the Romans, and probably Iron Age people before them, would make of this claim ... nothing new under the sun, perhaps. See entries in Geoffrey Grigson's "The Shell Country Alphabet" (1966) for more about beacons and signal stations. "The Timetables of Science" complied by Hellemans and Bunch, published in the US by Simon & Schuster (1988) has an "optical telegraph using torches to signal from hilltop to hilltop" operating in Greece before 421 BC. ... Is It Missing the Point? More seriously, Standage ignores the most important, economic factor in his comparison between the telegraph and the internet. He quite rightly points out that the use of the telegraph raised concerns about privacy (Chapter 7), since even the automated versions involved some transcription by humans. The fact that unlike the telegraph, there is no human intervention necessary to communicate privately via the Internet, neither via email nor via web site and in chat room, has been a major factor in the growth of the single most important economic driver of the internet, pornography. This is a business now estimated to be of the same economic order of magnitude worldwide as the automobile industry. The difference between internet and telegraph in arrangements for privacy is crucial to differences in their growth and influence; the development of other technology such as webcams and streaming video amplifies it. Yet Standage has a clue in his own narrative; he quotes Edison in Chapter 8 to the effect that the private on-line chat between telegraph operators (rather than the paid-for messages) was frequently "smutty or anatomically explicit". Nevertheless, it's an informative and fascinating sketch of how technology and communication combine in ways new yet strangely familiar. The differences as well as the similarities need to be understood.
Rating: 
Summary: A Victory for the Internet
Review: After reading The Victorian Internet it was very interesting to see how technology emerged. I was always interested in the history of how all it began. Tom Standage started to write about the Monks in how they first started to communicate from distances. It was espcially interesting how Samuel Morse began to be interested in producing the "Morse Code". It was a very nice book giving the history in how it all began and how it is getting better and better. Of course there weren't many very honest people in dealing with the 'new technologies' that went on. Who is to say there is all honesty these days. Some people got the credit that they did not deserve fully. I'm sure if anyone reads this book will be very surprised in what went on those days. What I like about this book is that it is very easy to read and it has some humor built into it. I think people will enjoy reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: The Rise & Fall of the Telegraph
Review: From the late 1840s to the advent of the telephone in the early 1880s, the telegraph provided the first modern means of instant communication to a suddenly shrunken world. Standage's book is easy to read with several interesting anecdotes, including appearances by more than a few eccentric characters. Take for example Dr. Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse, something of a crackpot who, despite a pathetic lack of scientific knowledge, talked his way into becoming the official electrician of the Atlantic Telegraph Company. This organization pioneered the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858. Within a month Whitehouse had fried the wire by mandating the use of excessive voltage to transmit messages. Successful and reliable transatlantic cabling thus had to wait until the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865. Although we enjoyed the easy to read style in which the book is written, a dearth of footnotes providing source citation is a minor annoyance (thus, we docked Standage a star in Amazon's ranking system). Sometimes quotes appear to be completely unattributable, and it would have been nice to see from where Standage drew them. Regardless, it is an easy and fun read and the book will no doubt open the eyes of the current generation to the fact that "Everything old is new again" holds true today more than ever.
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining and insightful.
Review: I read this after hearing Tom Standage talk about his book on NPR. He told interesting stories about distant romances and friendships and the flurry of business that accompanied this new technology. Sounds like today's internet but it was just another watershed technology from the nineteenth century, the telegraph. After reading this book, I realized that today's internet is not such a revolutionary device at all, in fact it seems to be just a modern version of the telegraph. Messages, stock quotes, purchases...nothing groundbreaking. I'm convinced the revolution the "internetizens" think is around the corner will never come. It is just a new device that everyone will think they need, but when they get it, they'll find nothing new to do with it that they can't do at the library.
Rating:
Summary: I really liked it
Review: I really enjoyed this book. If you're looking for an in-depth study of the science behind the telegraph or a statistical sociological study, however, this is not the book for you. This book really glosses over the technical side in a bare-bones manner. For example, the book states that telegraphy over long distances requires a series of small batteries working together instead of one large battery, and leaves it at that. No explanation as to why this is the case is provided. As the title suggests, the goal of this book is to draw parallels between today's Internet and yesterday's telegraph. Since the parallels are more in the area of societal effects, not technologies, the technologies are naturally de-emphasized. As a college professor, I think this book will be a perfect one to use in my Technology in Our Lives course. Now, don't let that comment scare you. I don't mean to suggest that this is an academic treatise on the telegraph's societal impacts. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. This is a very engaging book that would hold the interest of readers of all types. It reads almost like "historical fiction," but it's not fiction, of course. The book takes a "breadth over depth" approach to its subject, and yet contains a lot of details. Although I knew how the telegraph, especially once the Atlantic was crossed with a telegraph wire, changed commerce and the news industry, I had no real idea of the online games and online romances that occurred over the telegraph wires all over the world. The parallels with the modern Internet are fascinating. As I said, I really enjoyed this book and plan to use it in one of my classes. Go into this book with your eyes open, however, knowing what the book's goal and thesis are. If you're looking for detailed information on the science and technology of the telegraph, or an in-depth, statistical sociological study, this is not the book for you. If, on the other hand, you wish to be exposed to series of parallels between the Internet's and the telegraph's impacts on culture and society, this is an engaging book that will fulfill that desire.
Rating:
Summary: Short book on a fantastic breakthrough
Review: Standage largely succeeds in supporting his claim that Victorians returning to 21st century Earth through a time-travel machine would not be overly impressed with our Internet, because "they had one of their own." His short book - easily read in one sitting or a cross-country airline trip - covers the birth of the optical telegraph (a French invention that used the waving wooden arms atop a tower) through its electrification, the invention of Morse code, and to its decline with the invention of the telephone. He shows that the telegraph, like the Internet, spawned codes, hackers, criminal gangs, romance, and information overload. And the telegraph was greeted with the same overheated claims as the Internet that faster and easier communication among peoples would usher in World Peace.
Unfortunately, Standage's book ends abruptly in the 1880s, when the telephone began to replace the telegraph. "Telegrams" still flourished in the 20th century, and Morse Code is still used today by amateur radio operators. A few pages at the end of Standage's tale about the remaining echo from that wonderous 19th century device would have made a more complete book.
Even so, if you want to learn about how an amateur inventor - Samuel Morse - became inspired to invent this simple device, and how was resisted initially and then changed the world, then this is a good place to start.
Rating: 
Summary: Could have been a great story.
Review: The author missed what could have been a great story in this journalistic (in the worst sense of the word) story of this fascinating invention. The hook which attempts to link the telegraph with the internet is a strained metaphor -- an attempt to make the book relevant. Missed or lightly touched on is how the telegraphy truly changed the world -- how wars were fought, how business is conducted. Instead we get a lot of the fluffy stories of people getting married by telegraph etc. Also glossed over are any real technical details about how the various gadgets worked. The author obviously doesn't know the difference between a volt and jolt and assumes the readers are equally ignorant. Pity because the relationship between invention and history is a great story and the telegraph is a great way of telling this story. This book just skims the surface.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Kind of History
Review: The comparison of a modem sending tens of thousand of bits a second with the focused effort of a practiced telegrapher sold me on this book. We all know what happened to the telegrapher; the implicit question being asked is what of our modern professions is destined for the same fate?
This book highlights the various analogies between Victorian technology and the technology of the present. While they appear so obvious upon reading, the honest reader will admit that Mr. Standage has unearthed many lessons lost over the years--not the least of which is the value of thinking big--thinking well beyond the capability of current technology. Overall this book is an excellent primer in the oft-forgotten fact that history repeats itself and that the educated among us should seek a better understanding of the past before making decisions about our future.
Mr. Standage's admiration for the feats of those who dared to think big enough to complete a transatlantic cable comes through strongly. He strikes a wistful tone--like many others, he demonstrates that our present-day technology can achieve far more than we sometimes dare to think.
Rating:
Summary: Parallels Galore
Review: The idea of this book is that the telegraph had much the same effect for the Victorians, as the internet has on our own times. The world got smaller: markets became more efficient and larger and diplomats had to respond to crises in real time. Journalists had to adapt and organize syndicates for gathering and sharing information. Codes and ciphers increased in importance and commercial value while governments futilely tried to control and restrict their use. All of these things are as familiar to us, as it was to the Victorians. Sandage has done a credible job in researching the parallels and tells the story with plenty of amusing asides and anecdotes, making for an easy read. The stories about how the telegraph was used in affairs of the heart, and the ingenuity of criminals to find innovative methods of practicing their craft shows one more time that there is little really new under the sun.
Rating:
Summary: Past and future...
Review: The title of this book, 'The Victorian Internet,' refers to the 'communications explosion' that took place with the advent and expansion of telegraph wire communications. Prior to this, communication was notoriously slow, particularly as even postal communications were subject to many difficulties and could take months for delivery (and we complain today of the 'allow five days' statements on our credit cards billings!). The parallels between the Victorian Internet and the present computerised internet are remarkable. Information about current events became relatively instantaneous (relative, that is, to the usual weeks or months that it once took to receive such information). There were skeptics who were convinced that this new mode of communication was a passing phase that would never take on (and, in a strict sense, they were right, not of course realising that the demise of the telegraph system was not due to the reinvigoration of written correspondence but due to that new invention, the telephone). There were hackers, people who tried to disrupt communications, those who tried to get on-line free illegally, and, near the end of the high age of telegraphing, a noticeable slow-down in information due to information overload (how long is this page going to take to download?? isn't such a new feeling after all). The most interesting chapter to me is that entitled 'Love over the Wires' which begins with an account of an on-line wedding, with the bride in Boston and the groom in New York. This event was reported in a small book, Anecdotes of the Telegraph, published in London in 1848, which stated that this was 'a story which throws into the shade all the feats that have been performed by our British telegraph.' This story is really one of love and adventure, as the bride's father had sent the young groom away for being unworthy to marry his daughter, but on a stop-over on his way to England, he managed to get a magistrate and telegraph operator to arrange the wedding. The marriage was deemed to be legally binding. A very interesting and remarkable story that perhaps would have been forgotten by history had history not set out to repeat itself with our modern internet.
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