The Telephone

One hundred and fifty years ago, the telephone burst onto the world stage like magic, a supernatural instrument bringing voices from afar. Instantly, the ability to speak across vast distances began to transform every part of life: from business organisation to military tactics, from news gathering to sex work. Telephones, though an extraordinary invention, became so ubiquitous – in offices and on streets, on bedside tables and kitchen walls – that they came to seem ordinary. People forgot how they ever lived without them. In The Telephone, renowned science historian James Gleick explores myths about the telephone’s invention and reveals the corrupt scheming and ruthless tactics of those who sought to make money from it. As dial telephones, landlines, telephone books and telephone booths vanish into the past, he shows how this commonplace object ushered in the information age, and changed not only the world but who we are as human beings. PRAISE FOR JAMES GLEICK ‘Some writers excel at crafting a historical narrative, others at elucidating esoteric theories, still others at humanizing scientists. Gleick is a master of all these skills’ – The Wall Street Journal ‘Gleick does what only the best science writers can do: take a subject of which most of us are only peripherally aware and put it at the center of the universe’ – Time