"The Victorian Internet"

[fiefoe]

Further contrivances:

• "Time itself is telegraphed out of existence," declared the Daily Telegraph of London, a newspaper whose very name was chosen to give the impression of rapid, up-to-date delivery of news.
• "It is a well-known fact that no other section of the population avail themselves more readily and speedily of the latest triumphs of science than the criminal class,"
• With the telegraph's ability to destroy distance, it provided plenty of scope for exploiting information imbalances:
• Wheatstone and his friend Charles Babbage, who is best known for his failed attempts to build a mechanical computer, were both keen crackers of codes and ciphers
• Meanwhile, the rules determining when codes could and could not be used were becoming increasingly complicated as national networks, often with different sets of rules, were interconnected.
• single Latin words to represent various calamities: COQUABUM meant "ENGAGEMENT BROKEN OFF," CAMBITAS meant "COLLARBONE PUT OUT,"
• The cable actually became more profitable when the rate was halved and then halved again, because the lower prices attracted more customers.)
• The fishing industry, the mining industry, the sausage industry, bankers, railroads, and insurance companies all had their own codes,
• the plan was abandoned when the impracticability of printing thousands of copies of the vast vocabulary, and getting telegraph clerks to laboriously check every word of every message, became apparent.
• A running count was kept for each book, and each time a money transfer telegram was sent, the next word in its unique numerical order was sent as one of the words of the message.

• The messages were soon decoded and were found to express nothing more than what one official de scribed as "simple, elemental, natural feelings"
• There was only one way to see which interpretation was correct: to get Panizzardi to send another message, whose exact wording was known, in the same code.
• something that even the most farsighted of telegraph advocates had never dared to imagine: to conduct an on-line wedding.
• A disapproving parent could alert the authorities at Gretna Green before they had even arrived. "What an enemy science is to romance and love!" declared one critic.
• In some cases the tales passing over the wires would find their way into the local newspapers. Most did not because, according to Edison, they were far too smutty or anatomically explicit.
• working relationships flowered into on-line romances. According to one writer, "Sometimes these flourished; sometimes they came to an abrupt halt when the operators met for the first time."

<<