The Gilded Age Internet and the People’s Telephone

[robotnik2004]

Ten years ago, Tom Standage wrote a best-seller called The Victorian Internet, which elaborated many similarities between the 19th century telegraph and today’s interwebs. One could write a similar book about the early telephone, and in some ways, I guess I am doing just that. (I will next write a book about the Pony Express called The Jacksonian Internet, then a book about CB radio called The Jimmy Carterian Internet, and finally a book about the internet called The Millennial Pneumatic Tube.) I met Standage at this year’s Business History Conference and he cheerfully admitted that he was in the business of “simplification and exaggeration.” After several years of doing the opposite to the history of telephony, simplifying and exaggerating sounds like something fun to try.

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[Cross-posted from Old is the New New. Comments welcome here or there.]