Victorian Internet

1207 Words3 Pages

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneer delivers a tale of the history of the telegraph - one of the most vital technological innovation. The book written by Tom Standage, who is a journalist and author from England. He is also familiar as a science and technology writer for The Guardian who has skillfully applied the historical analogy in science, technology and business writing. The Victorian Internet is one of his famous book that gives a comprehensive view on the development of the telegraph and the story of the scientists who invented it. The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneer tells the story …show more content…

The extreme delay of the messages soon led people into finding another method to transmit information. Initially, they came up with the idea of using sound or light, but only when the electric telegraph was introduced that messages were transferred quickly than ever before. The telegraph represented a revolutionary development in communications because as long as people were joined by telegraphic wires, they were freed from the burden of long distance. The telegraph also reflects scientific and technological developments, both in the United States and other countries. The telegraph expanded the growth of the railroads, played a salient role in Civil War military, and cuts down information costs. It was widely used by banks and was also embraced among diplomats. In addition, the telegraph also became a bridge for many …show more content…

This chapter attracts most of my attention because it divulged how porous the telegraph system was to the perpetrators and how it was changed to be more secure. Even though the telegraph had been effectively functioning, it was still easily manipulated since it hugely depended on people to transmit. The messages must be transferred through the telegraph operators, therefore, some of them were bribed by many hackers to disclose the confidential information of the stock market. This negative criminal use of the telegraph led to the development of cryptography. The least interesting part of the book lay in Chapter 2 when Standage went into detail of describing the physical structure of the telegraph and enumerated the myriad names of scientists and physicists. If I were the editor in the publishing company and had an opportunity to read the author's draft, I would simplify the complex description of the physical structure of the telegraph and also reduce the number of names in the

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