“Love over the wires” (Chapter 8: The Victorian Internet, by Tom Standage)
Tom Standage’s book The Victorian Internet was a revelation when I read it. As a cub academic, one of my colleagues in the psychology department - a woman who’s been doing fascinating research on smart homes - recommended it as an “airport read”. I’m very glad I did (although my book group didn’t find it nearly as fascinating and worthy as I did). It felt like stepping into an Infinite Perspective Machine: the hubris that we experience during the hysteria over a contemporary “new” technology often has parallels with previous periods of innovation. Standage places the Internet and the Web in this context.
Briefly, it describes the social changes that we attribute to the online environment, but as they were observed and practiced during the era of the telegraph. One of the phenomena he examines is love “over the wires”.
These are my notes from Chapter 8 of The Victorian Internet.
the first “online wedding” was described in Anecdotes of the Telegraph in 1848: “the bride was in Boston, and the groom in New York”. “with the telegraph operators relaying their words to and fro in Morse code, the two were duly wed by the magistrate.” It was legally binding. (pp. 122-123)
(marriage via the web isn’t legally binding)
“experienced [telegraph] operators cold even recognise their friends merely from the style of their Morse code” (p. 123)
“During quiet periods… the online interaction really got going, with stories, jokes and local gossip circulated over the wires. According to one account, ‘stories are told, opinions exchanged, and laughs enjoyed, just as if the participants were sitting together at a club.’” (p. 124)
“Sometimes [online romances between telegraph operators] flourished; sometimes they came to an abrupt halt when the operators met for the first time.”
‘Romances of the Telegraph’ - published in Western Electrician (1891)
‘Wired love: a romance of dots and dashes’ - by Ella Cheever Thayer (1879)
‘Dangers of wired love’ - Electrical World (1886)
- ‘keeping up a flirtation with seveal young men over the wires, including Frank Frisbie, a married man. (p. 129)
‘the telegraph was sometimes able to help couples transcend real-world barriers’:
* distance (keeping in touch, getting married)
