Imperial Science
Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire

Explores how Britain's global cable network became both the 'nervous system' of its Empire and the key to electrical physics.

Bruce J. Hunt (Author)

9781108828543, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 December 2022

322 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'Hunt's book contributes to a historiography which already consists of excellent works ... The added value of the book is in providing evidence, as no other authors have done so far, of the technological steps leading to the great telegraph connection across the Atlantic and later around the world. Hunt also makes the various themes understandable to non-experts, building a compelling and well-illustrated narrative.' Andrea Giuntini, Technology and Culture

In the second half of the nineteenth century, British firms and engineers built, laid, and ran a vast global network of submarine telegraph cables. For the first time, cities around the world were put into almost instantaneous contact, with profound effects on commerce, international affairs, and the dissemination of news. Science, too, was strongly affected, as cable telegraphy exposed electrical researchers to important new phenomena while also providing a new and vastly larger market for their expertise. By examining the deep ties that linked the cable industry to work in electrical physics in the nineteenth century - culminating in James Clerk Maxwell's formulation of his theory of the electromagnetic field - Bruce J. Hunt sheds new light both on the history of the Victorian British Empire and on the relationship between science and technology.

Prologue. 'An imperial science'
1. 'An ill-understood effect of induction': telegraphy and field theory in Victorian Britain
2. Wildman Whitehouse, William Thomson, and the first Atlantic cable
3. Redeeming failure: the joint committee investigation
4. Units and standards: the ohm is where the art is
5. The ohm, the speed of light, and Maxwell's theory of the electromagnetic field
6. To rule the waves: Britain's cable empire and the making of 'Maxwell's equations'
Epilogue. Full circle.

Subject Areas: Communications engineering / telecommunications [TJK], Electronics engineering [TJF], History of engineering & technology [TBX], History of science [PDX], British & Irish history [HBJD1]