Introduction describing the state of personal communications before electric telegraphy; as well as -

Cooke & Wheatstone - A view of the creators of Britain’s telegraph, their  initial slow progress introducing the electric telegraph, their first lines, the  innovation electric railway signalling for safety, and their fraught relationship in the 1830s and 1840s.This chapter was revised in November 2010 to include important new research on their earliest intruments;

The Electric Telegraph Company  - A comprehensive history of the first company formed to offer the public access to telegraphy. From when it was launched in 1846, its early crises and eventual domination in its domestic market, to its contribution to the success of the world-wide cable network after it had become the Electric & International Telegraph Company in 1855. Detailing for the first time its efforts to create a global communications network from London to Calcutta in the 1850s and 1860s, dating from the original scheme for a cross Channel cable in 1847 to planning, in 1863, its own system in British India, using its alliances with Prussia and Russia to connect London with Bombay and Calcutta. It anticipated reaching New York by telegraph overland by way of Siberia, Russian America, Canada and California.  It even experimented with wireless telegraphy in 1863! 

Competitors and Allies   - The history of the many other organisations in telegraphy, including the British Electric Telegraph Company, the English & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, the European Telegraph Company, the Submarine Telegraph Company, the Electric Telegraph Company of Ireland, the Irish Sub-Marine Telegraph Company, the International Telegraph Company, the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, the London District Telegraph Company, the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company, Bonelli’s Electric Telegraph Company, the Economic Telegraph Company, Reuter’s Telegram Company, the Great Northern Telegraph Company, the Indo-European Telegraph Company and the many others that worked public telegraphs in Britain, whose stories have never before been told;

Bain - A new and comprehensive perspective on the achievements and disappointments of Alexander Bain in telegraphy during the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s, including the short-lived Electric Time Company, accompanied by engravings of his early instruments;

Non-Competitors  - A summary of the many individuals and unsuccessful firms involved in public telegraphy, optical and electrical, who tried and failed, including the first of all, the Voltaic Telegraph Company of 1838, as well as the Liverpool & Holyhead Telegraph, the General Telegraph Association, the Marine Telegraph Association, the Scottish Electric Telegraph Company, the General Oceanic Telegraph Company, the General Commercial Telegraph Company, the General Telegraph Company, the Universal Electric Telegraph Company, and the Globe Telegraph Company; describing, too, S F B Morse’s embarrassing attempt to enter the field in London during 1845;

How the Companies worked - The story in some detail of their relationship with the public, their marketing, their staff, systems and processes, including the introduction of “electric banking” in the 1860s;

What the Companies charged - An explanation of how their complex pricing evolved and eventually simplified, and their price fixing cartel;

The Companies and the News - The first and wholly original story of the initial electronic  news-gathering organisation of 1848, created by the Electric Telegraph Company, its competitors,  the enmity of the press to telegraphy and the arrival of Reuter;

The Companies and the Weather - The incidental story of how the telegraph enabled weather forecasting;

The Companies Abroad - A summary of how the domestic telegraph companies and the new cable companies eventually conquered the oceans, especially the route to India, and the East India Company's lines;

The Companies’ Foreign Operations - An explanation of their overseas pricing and their technical problems, and how telegram agencies sought to undermine their pricing with all manner of tricks;

Railway Signal Telegraphy – A brief, illustrated history of the earliest  innovations in electric train control between the years 1838 and 1868, including the very advanced apparatus of the Railway Electric Signals Company;

Telegraph at War - The story of the first field telegraph, designed by the Electric Telegraph Company for the campaign in the Crimea in 1854; the unique Crimea submarine cable connecting the front with London; and the subsequent use of the telegraph by the British Army and other countries at war until 1868;

Technical Detail - A mass of detail that attempts to explain the technology, public and private, used by each telegraph company between 1836 and 1868, and connected devices such as batteries, blasting machines, and burglar and fire alarms. There is also a description of the  “air circuits”, the pneumatic tubes used in the Cities from 1854, as well as the  “wireless telegraph” of 1862;

Finale - In which the successes of the companies and the economic failures of the government telegraphs are briefly analysed.

Telegraph Stations 1862 - A consolidated list of all 1,178 cities and towns in Britain with public telegraphs in a typical mid-century year

Telegraph Company Stamps - A short, illustrated history of all of the stamps and franks issued by the companies between 1854 and 1868

The Rest of the World - Cooke & Wheatstone and the Growth of the Telegraph in Europe, the Telegraph in the United States, and a Statistical Comparison of the World’s Telegraphs

Instrument Gallery - In addition to many pictures and engravings in the chapters there is a host of  illustrations, taken from patents, catalogues, books and journals of the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, of most of the telegraphic instruments mentioned in the text

Telegraph Maps 1852-1868 -  now with a large coloured “Chart of the Electric Telegraph Company’s System in Great Britain” in 1852, as well as a new, better quality, copy of the “Telegraphs of Europe” in 1860, a detailed map published by the Electric & International Telegraph Company with all of its continental connections just before the worldwide expansion of wires and cables, and a “Telegraph Map of the Eastern World” in 1865 from the ‘Illustrated London News’, all of these are downloadable; also a set of city diagrams from 1868 showing the location of the telegraph offices in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester 

Appendices - Comprising a List of Telegraph Companies from 1838 to 1868; the Domestic Telegraph Companies in 1868; the Addresses and Locations of Companies; a List of Domestic and Foreign Cables; Biographies of Company Personalities; a List of Telegraphic Suppliers of the 1850s and 1860s; Special Acts of Parliament that authorised the companies; Royal Charters obtained by the companies; Government Acts affecting telegraphy;  Significant Telegraphic Patents;  the Legal Context; a Glossary of Nineteenth Century Telegraphic Terms; concluding with a little melodrama, “Electric Sparks”, set within an electric telegraph office...

The Most Wonderful Thing 

“We went to the Exhibition and had the electric telegraph show explained and demonstrated before us. It is the most wonderful thing and the boy who works it does so with the greatest of ease and rapidity. Messages were sent out to Manchester, Edinburgh, &c., and answers received in a few seconds – truly marvellous!”

Victoria R                                                                                                                  July 9, 1851