The Victorian Internet

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers by Tom Standage

Published in 1998, The Victorian Internet takes a look back at the period that witnessed the birth of the “Mother of all Networks” — the telegraph.

In a brief, concise but yet colorful and engaging way, Tom Standage — business editor at The Economist Magazine and author of four history books — relates the life of the telegraph introducing its bold but foolish early experiments in 1746 ending with two hundred electrified Parisian Monks, then he moves to the first optical-mechanical telegraph, its revolutionary electric version, the laying of the transatlantic cable and its explosive growth and success throughout the Victorian era.
With a series of historical anecdotes and biographical information about the pioneers, the technological developments, controversies, setbacks, and social effects of the telegraph, the author draws a subtle parallel between the telegraph and the Internet.

Instant communication over vast distances, new business practices, information overload, online romance and organized crime and attempts of governmental regulation, are merely some examples one can enumerate when comparing both technologies.

Introducing us among others to Morse, Cook and Wheatstone — the first On-line pioneers — we realize how disruptive and revolutionary the technology was. Enabling instantaneous communication, “[…] the telegraph lives on within the communications technologies that have subsequently built upon its foundations: the telephone, the fax machine, and, more recently, the Internet” (p205). Relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by skeptics, the invention and diffusion of the telegraph laid the path to the multiple tools of instant mass communication we take for granted today.

One of the main themes of the book is the adoption cycle of a new technology. The success of the telegraph started with the slow and painful diffusion of the invention amongst governments, businesses and the general public, illustrate the Knowledge, Persuasion and Decision stages of the innovation-decision process described by Everett Rogers in his book Diffusion of Innovation. The last two stages of this five-stage adoption process, Implementation and Confirmation, are well illustrated by the worldwide adoption of the “highway of thought” (p74).
The explosive growth of the telegraph eventually caused the congestion of the network. Soon, delays in the retransmission of the messages (p92) became common and in the early 1850s, Josiah Latimer Clark stepped up to alleviate the problem, and as we can tell now, responded to a “supervening social necessity” as postulated by Brian Winston: “the consequences of the introduction of one technology forcing the development of another” (Winston – p6). He devised a “steam-powered pneumatic tube system” that will help carry telegraph messages from one telegraph office to another, transforming major offices into huge hubs for information processing (p95-98). With more businesses relying upon the telegraph, and the network facing an ever increasing demand for speed and volume, inventors such as Thomas Edison, Joseph B. Stearns and Jean Maurice Emile Baudot were drawn to devise improved technologies such as the duplex and quadruplex systems which enabled sending simultaneous messages in both directions carried on four streams of traffic on a single wire (p194). Ironically, these new efficient and economic technologies marked the downfall and demise of the telegraph and its operators.

The path leading to the internet from the first computer and the one leading to the telegraph from the semaphore are punctuated by striking parallels; Apart from the social repercussions and unexpected applications (Romance, Crime, etc…), some of the most salient parallels that come to mind when reading this book are the impact on the journalism and the business of reporting news, as well as the emergence of new professions.
Both the rise of the telegraph and the Internet had a significant impact on the way news is reported, changing the very nature of news as well as its sources and distribution process. The increase in volume and speed of information created an information overload very comparable to the situation we are facing today with the Internet (p164). “And just as the telegraph led to a direct increase in the pace and stress of business life, today the complaint of information overload, blamed on the Internet, is commonplace” (p210).

News, delivered to newspaper offices through the telegraph, altered the “balance of power between providers and publishers of information” (p149). The wiring of the world increased the public interest in international news, and newspapers were racing to get to the news first. “[…] with news available from distant places, the question arose, who ought to be doing the reporting?” (p150). In response, newspapers were force to collaborate and share sources, which led to the creation of news agencies like the New York Associated Press and Reuters.

New media technologies like Twitter have the potential to upstage today’s mainstream Medias and give anyone the opportunity to do live reporting, and thus redefine once again the role and place of Media in our society.

In the preface, Standage states that “the telegraph unleashed the greatest revolution in communication since the development of the printing press.” On one hand, just like the printing press brought the downfall of the scribes, the telegraph did put the Pony Express out of business (p59). On the other hand, the telegraph required skilled operators to manipulate the technology and led to the creation of a new prestigious and”attractive profession, offering the hope of rapid social advancement […]” (p143). On the same note, the rise of the digital era brought its share of new professionals, Internet gurus and computer savvies.

“The electric telegraph was, in many ways, far more disconcerting for the inhabitants of the time than today’s advances are for us” (p213). The telegraph was indeed far more disruptive to the Victorians than the Internet has been for us. The Internet was introduced in an age where tools of mass communications were already in place, but the telegraph started on its own and, as Standage showed us, had a very arduous birth.
In the afterword added in 2007 Standage makes a new and interesting parallel introducing the comeback of the telegraph through text messaging exchanged between mobile phones… Quite an interesting insight to complete a book that was already rich in original ideas and engaging arguments. Did the mobile phone “complete the democratization of telecommunications started by the telegraph”?

The Victorian Internet is a must read for students of the MCDM, as well as anyone interested in the history of communication technologies. It gives a clear and concise overview of the invention of the telegraph, its diffusion and adoption process, as well as a good understanding of its socio-economic impact on our society.

References:

Rogers, Everett M., (1995) Diffusion of Innovation, Fourth Edition, The Free Press, New York.

Standage, T. (1998). The Victorian Internet: The remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s on-line pioneers. Walker & Company, New York.

Winston, B. (1998). Media technology and society. A history: from the telegraph to the Internet. Routledge, London.