Chapter 2 explains that one of the most important discoveries about the electric telegraph was the fact that it was very easy to construct. To make an electric telegraph all that the people needed were a battery, a bulb and wire. In France and England and the United States different people tried to construct one but they all had problems. No one was able to build a really working telegraph. Different systems were also developed. For example, William Cooke in England developed a system and Samuel Morse in the United States of America developed another system. In the end it was the system developed by Samuel Morse that became accepted and used all over the world later. This was known as the Morse Code System. It was a system based on dots and dashes that were combined in patterns to represent the letters of the alphabet. By sending the dots and dashes from one place to another, messages could be sent very quickly. The inventors of the systems had ideas about running wire from Europe to North America so they could be able to send messages from place like New York to London or Paris. These inventors had “visions of a wired world”. The problem for them though was that the people in government and business did not think much of their invention. The next job they had was to convince the governments and business leaders that their invention had benefits for the society.
Summary by Lei T., Saleh A., Alex E., Eric A.
Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet 