'THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE' by Herbert N. Casson.

Here for you to download is an electronic copy (or 'etext') of 'THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE' by Herbert N. Casson. It's dated 1910 and documents the early history of the telephone. This etext originates from Project Gutenberg and it is free to distribute. Read the notes about Project Gutenberg attached to the beginning of the book.

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To find why Project Gutenberg are doing this and for more information click here. Read the history of Project Gutenberg... they're not some weird religeous cult as I initially suspected! I first heard of them when 'Personal Computer World' included a selection of their etexts on one of it's cover CD-ROMs a few years ago.

The book...

Meanwhile I think that anyone interested in the telephone would benefit by downloading and reading 'The History of the Telephone'. Casson himself wrote the following in the preface of his book:

"It is such a story as the telephone itself might tell, if it could speak with a voice of its own. It is not technical. It is not statistical. It is not exhaustive. It is so brief, in fact, that a second volume could readily be made by describing the careers of telephone leaders...."

I have begun to read it and it's written in a simplistic style that is easily absorbed. It is also able to put across the wonder of this (at the time) new invention. We take the telephone for granted these days but back at the beginning of the century it was nothing short of a miracle...

Also available which might be of interest to some of you is 'HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH' By J. MUNRO. (Author of 'ELECTRICITY AND ITS USES,' PIONEERS OF ELECTRICITY,' 'THE WIRE AND THE WAVE'; AND JOINT AUTHOR OF 'MUNRO AND JAMIESON'S POCKET-BOOK OF ELECTRICAL RULES AND TABLES.)'

I think you ought to visit Project Gutenberg and download this from them rather than me do all the hard work! Their Zip file is 188K. They also make the files available as text but these are a lot bigger.

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