it had been received and retranscribed in Birmingham, the
message would be sent by pneumatic tube to the telegraph office nearest the recipient and then delivered by messenger.
a PPROPRIATELY ENOUGH for the nation that pioneered the first telegraphs, the French had their own twist on the use of pneumatic
tubes. For of all the tube networks built around the world, the most successful was in Paris, where sending and receiving pneus became part of everyday life in the late nineteenth century. Like the pneumatic tube networks in many other major cities,
the Paris network was extensive enough that many local messages could be sent from sender to recipient entirely by tube and
messenger, without any need for telegraphic transmission. In these cases, the telegraph form that the sender wrote the message
on actually ended up in the hands of the recipient—which meant that long messages were just as easy to deliver as short messages.
So, in 1879, a new pricing structure was announced: For messages traveling within the Paris tube network, the price was fixed,
no matter how long the message. Faster than the post and cheaper than sending a telegram, this network provided a convenient
way to send local messages within Paris, though the service was operated by the state telegraph company and the messages were
officially regarded as telegrams.
Messages were written on special forms, which could be purchased, prepaid, in advance. These could then be deposited into
small post boxes next to conventional mailboxes, handed in at telegraph counters in post offices, or put into boxes mounted
on the backs of trams, which were unloaded when the trams reached the end of the line. Once in the system, messages were sent
along the tubes to the office nearest the destination and then delivered by messenger. Each message might have to pass through
several sorting stations on the way to its destination; it was date-stamped at each one, so that its route could be determined.
(The same is true of today's e-mail messages, whose headers reveal their exact paths across the Internet.) No enclosures
were allowed to be included with messages, and any messages that broke this rule were transferred to the conventional postal
service and charged at standard postal rates.
The scheme was a great success, and the volume of messages being passed around the network almost doubled in the first year.
The network was further extended as a result, and for many years messages were affectionately known as petits bleux, after the blue color of the message forms.
B Y THE EARLY 1870s, the Victorian Internet had taken shape: A patchwork of telegraph networks, submarine cables, pneumatic
tube systems, and messengers combined to deliver messages within hours over a vast area of the globe. New cables were being
laid all over the world. Malta had been linked to Alexandria in 1868, and a direct cable was laid from France to Newfoundland
in 1869. Cables reached India, Hong Kong, China, and Japan in 1870; Australia was connected in 1871, and South America in
1874.
In 1844, when Morse had started building the network, there were a few dozen miles of wire and sending a message from, say,
London to Bombay and back took ten weeks. But within thirty years there were over 650,000 miles of wire, 3o,ooo miles of submarine
cable, and 20,000 towns and villages were on-line—and messages could be telegraphed from London to Bombay and back in as little
as four minutes. "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. The world
had shrunk further and faster than it ever had before.
Morse's original telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore had hardly started out as a moneymaker; but the more points
there were on the network, the more useful it became. By the late 1860s, the telegraph industry, and the
message would be sent by pneumatic tube to the telegraph office nearest the recipient and then delivered by messenger.
a PPROPRIATELY ENOUGH for the nation that pioneered the first telegraphs, the French had their own twist on the use of pneumatic
tubes. For of all the tube networks built around the world, the most successful was in Paris, where sending and receiving pneus became part of everyday life in the late nineteenth century. Like the pneumatic tube networks in many other major cities,
the Paris network was extensive enough that many local messages could be sent from sender to recipient entirely by tube and
messenger, without any need for telegraphic transmission. In these cases, the telegraph form that the sender wrote the message
on actually ended up in the hands of the recipient—which meant that long messages were just as easy to deliver as short messages.
So, in 1879, a new pricing structure was announced: For messages traveling within the Paris tube network, the price was fixed,
no matter how long the message. Faster than the post and cheaper than sending a telegram, this network provided a convenient
way to send local messages within Paris, though the service was operated by the state telegraph company and the messages were
officially regarded as telegrams.
Messages were written on special forms, which could be purchased, prepaid, in advance. These could then be deposited into
small post boxes next to conventional mailboxes, handed in at telegraph counters in post offices, or put into boxes mounted
on the backs of trams, which were unloaded when the trams reached the end of the line. Once in the system, messages were sent
along the tubes to the office nearest the destination and then delivered by messenger. Each message might have to pass through
several sorting stations on the way to its destination; it was date-stamped at each one, so that its route could be determined.
(The same is true of today's e-mail messages, whose headers reveal their exact paths across the Internet.) No enclosures
were allowed to be included with messages, and any messages that broke this rule were transferred to the conventional postal
service and charged at standard postal rates.
The scheme was a great success, and the volume of messages being passed around the network almost doubled in the first year.
The network was further extended as a result, and for many years messages were affectionately known as petits bleux, after the blue color of the message forms.
B Y THE EARLY 1870s, the Victorian Internet had taken shape: A patchwork of telegraph networks, submarine cables, pneumatic
tube systems, and messengers combined to deliver messages within hours over a vast area of the globe. New cables were being
laid all over the world. Malta had been linked to Alexandria in 1868, and a direct cable was laid from France to Newfoundland
in 1869. Cables reached India, Hong Kong, China, and Japan in 1870; Australia was connected in 1871, and South America in
1874.
In 1844, when Morse had started building the network, there were a few dozen miles of wire and sending a message from, say,
London to Bombay and back took ten weeks. But within thirty years there were over 650,000 miles of wire, 3o,ooo miles of submarine
cable, and 20,000 towns and villages were on-line—and messages could be telegraphed from London to Bombay and back in as little
as four minutes. "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. The world
had shrunk further and faster than it ever had before.
Morse's original telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore had hardly started out as a moneymaker; but the more points
there were on the network, the more useful it became. By the late 1860s, the telegraph industry, and the
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