First sentence
On an APrIL DaY in 1746 at the grand convent of the Carthusians in Paris, about two hundred monks arranged themselves in a long, snaking line...
Description
The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. From the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet, whose experiments proved that electricity could be transmitted over great distances, to Samuel F. B. Morse, who developed the first practical electric telegraph in 1837, to Thomas Edison, who began his career in the telegraph business and proposed to his wife by tapping Morse code on her hand, Tom Standage tells a colorful tale of scientific discovery, technological cunning, personal rivalry, and cutthroat competition.