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John Dodds's Book Blog
Bookfan. Likes include classic fiction, crime and thrillers.
Currently reading
Steve Jobs
The Cuckoo's Calling
The Far Corner: A Mazy Dribble Through North-East Football
Forfeit
The Bicycle Book
World War I: The "Great War"
A History of Ireland in 100 Objects
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea (Swallows And Amazons)
Her Majesty's Pleasure: How Horse Racing Reveals the Queen
The Victorian Internet: the Remarkable Story of the Telegraph
A gripping story of invention and innovation in the 19th century. Two things particularly struck me: (a) that the initial experiments with the electric telegraph were much earlier than I had imagined and well before Faraday's theory of electricity explained what lay behind it all; (b) the long, 30 year, gestation then the incredible explosion of take up of the telegraph (650,000 miles of cable in just a few years) and the pace (within a decade) within which the key undersea cables were laid. Breathless stuff.
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