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The Beeb has an article (and, after it is broadcast sometime tomorrow, an audio stream of a programme) up about the creation of the "Victorian Internet": the world-wide telegraph cables that crossed oceans and continents to allow communication with the other side of the planet within hours, instead of weeks or months.

Although I knew some parts of it (the first trans-Atlantic cable lasted less than 24 hours, and the second less than a week), other parts I didn't, and they're interesting.  Take this little snippet, for example:

"The idea of electrical communication seems to have begun as long ago as 1746, when about 200 monks at monastery in Paris arranged themselves in a line over a mile long, each holding ends of 25ft iron wires.

"The abbot, also a scientist, discharged a Leiden jar (a primitive electrical battery) into the wire, giving all the monks a simultaneous electrical shock.

""This all sounds very silly, but is in fact extremely important because, firstly, they all said 'ow' which showed that you were sending a signal right along the line; and, secondly, they all said 'ow' at the same time, and that meant that you were sending the signal very quickly," explains Tom Standage, author of the Victorian Internet and technology editor at the Economist."