Abstract Summary
The unprecedented speed of telegraphic communication was the source of considerable excitement across Europe during the nineteenth century. The technology, it was often held, heralded a new age of instantaneous interpersonal communication, which would simplify the conduct of business, politics, and even everyday life. Looking back upon the period, we might be tempted to describe the revolutionary impact of the electric telegraph in a similar way, recognising its contribution to the global standardisation of time, to the streamlining of international diplomacy, to the organisation of the global securities market, and even to the elaboration of reliable weather forecasts—the historian James Beniger went so far as to call it a modern ‘control revolution’. The telegraph was a double-edged sword, however, and many contemporaries were in fact concerned that the speed of communication would upset the well-established structures of everyday life, with its ceaseless interventions into social relations, its interference with the channels of geopolitical communication, and its capacity to throw financial markets into turmoil with a dose of unexpected news. This paper examines the hopes and disappointments experienced by users of the telegraph across Germany, from politicians to businessmen, agriculturalists, and even ordinary villagers, as they turned to the technology to help them manage the vagaries of everyday life.
