Wiring the World

摘要

We are continually told, especially by those in the business, that technology is moving faster than it has ever done. But, while we try to keep abreast of the rapid advances in electronics, broadband telecoms and computing, it is refreshing to be reminded that the business structure of technology-based industry has changed surprisingly little. Dr Simone Mueller provides in this book a fascinating account of the first 50 years of the subsea telegraph industry, from the first successful Atlantic cable in 1866 through to the First World War and just beyond. This is by no means a technological history, but there are plenty of those already. This is an account of the companies and the people who built the industry, who moved on from what she calls the Great Atlantic Cable of 1866 to create a worldwide telecommunications industry. Mueller writes about the financiers and the robber barons, the engineers and the scientists, the politicians and the ... well, the public relations people.