The telegraph was the Victorian internet

I read this book when I was back in university, and thoroughly enjoyed it! The social change at that time was enormous.

Boats were once the fastest way to send a message (faster than horses). The railway suddenly made it much quicker to communicate, and within a generation was quickly followed by the telegraph.

The effects of the telegraph on language, as people found cheaper ways to send messages when they had to pay by the character, are having modern parallels with SMS and emojis.

If you're interested in telegraph's and early communications technology, I HIGHLY recommend getting a copy of "The Story of Telecommunication" by George P. Oslin [1]. It's very thoroughly researched and clearly a labor of love. tchingazing video on YouTube.

Also, I can't help but share this awesome video I recently found - "How the Teleprinter Works" [2]. It's fascinating and very well done.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/STORY-TELECOMMUNICATIONS-George-P-Osl...

[2]: https://youtu.be/HcMHam54EOI

It really was, complete with a 1880s-vintage Tinder: http://archive.org/stream/wiredlovearomanc24353gut/24353.txt

I read that a while ago and though the plot itself is kinda facile (it is supposed to be just a simple romance novel after all), it's really fascinating to see the parallels of the telegraph with the internet from a cultural aspect. It's easy enough to draw comparisons between the two as being different stages in the evolution of networks etc but the human side of things is always a bit harder to sum up.

I also present you with this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here on HN but if you haven't read Terry Pratchett's "Going Postal", I highly recommend it.

I hardly ever read non-fiction but I read this book a few years ago and absolutely loved it. Was sorry when I was finished. Well worth anyone's time.