The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage

The few contacts I had with the telegraph before reading this book were reading old Lucky Luke comics of my dad’s. I always found it fascinating to see the desert lined with telegraph poles next to railway lines.

Tom Standage lays out the complete history of the telegraph, from its predecessors to its invention, and to its death. It’s interesting to how inventors worked during that time, from getting the machine to work to register a patent quickly to try to sell this to countries.

When I started this book, I expected the whole book to be about what the telegraph network and the internet have in common. Instead, only the last 5 pages do so.

But if you are interested in the history of the telegraph and how the telephone was invented (spoiler, sorry), I can recommend this book.