Web sites and e-mails, surfing and down-loading: everyone's doing it. It's the latest thing, that's why. Or is it? This timely book reminds us that, in a sense, we have been here before. The mid-Victorian period witnessed a communications revolution of no less, and in some ways rather more, significance than the spread of the Internet, in the form of the telegraph. For the first time people could communicate across nations and around the world in seconds and minutes rather than days and weeks. It transformed the flow of information, the conduct of business and the exercise of government; it created the first 'global village'. Standage tells the resonant story of the remarkable individuals who created this technology in Britain and America and of the many surprising uses to which it was put. (Kirkus UK)