The Victorian Internet

I read this post from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education) about the commercial development of the telegraph. The main premise of the post was that government efforts to start/promote use of the telegraph were unsuccessful, but entrepreneurs took the ball and ran with it. The response of the British Admiralty was that they were going to continue to send messages via semaphore, which reminded me of this Ken Smith tweet about the use of semaphore in communication and this reflective post. The article has some good links, including the book “The Victorian Internet”, hence the title of this post. We have come a long way in communication, but it is good to be cognizant of our roots.