If you like this, you will surely enjoy The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. It talks about the optical telegraph and the electric one, and more than the technology, the culture that developed around the telegraph.

If nothing else, download the free Kindle sample, or read the preface and comments on Tom's site and see for yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JW5WQSR/

https://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/the-victorian-intern...

One of my favorite chapters is Love over the Wires:

> Spies and criminals are invariably among the first to take advantage of new modes of communication. But lovers are never far behind. There are no known examples of amorous messages being passed over the optical telegraph, since it was not available for general public use; but within a few months of the electric telegraph being opened to the public, it was being used for something that even the most farsighted of telegraph advocates had never dared to imagine: to conduct an on-line wedding...

> with the telegraph operators relaying their words to and fro in Morse code, the two were duly wed by the magistrate. "The exchange of consent being given by the electric flash, they were thus married by telegraph," reports a contemporary account.