Victorian Technology

The Victorian Internet tells the colorful story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. The electric telegraph nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before or since, and its story mirrors and predicts that of the Internet in numerous ways.

While 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, turning points. For ordinary people, and also for the rich, famous, and powerful, the months from May to August turned out to be a summer of consequence.

We all know that the best way to study a foreign language is to go to a country where it's spoken, but can the same immersion method be applied to history? How do interactions with antique objects influence perceptions of the modern world?

Why did Abby choose someone as straight-laced as Chastity Arrowsmith to join the Misfits? Will Kitty be taken prisoner by the Prussians after having been left behind on Malta? Why is Tanya so good at everything? The answer to these questions and more in this compilation of short stories, which forms the sixth part of the Misfit Squadron series.

With his job in Muscovy almost done, all Aviator Lieutenant Drake wants to do is go home to good old England, taking the love of his life, Gwen Stone, a pilot of Misfit Squadron, with him. Unfortunately there are several things preventing that, including a glory-hungry Muscovite flight leader, the small matter of the Crimson Barons, and the trivial question of whether she actually feels the same way about him...

Time has run out for the Kingdom of Great Britain. They have suffered defeat after defeat, losing one overseas garrison after another, until the only option left to them was to retreat back to their own shores. Now, though, an army, the likes of which the world has never seen, has gathered on the other side of the channel, looking to deny them even that and bring the war to an abrupt conclusion. Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, Britain will need a miracle if it is to survive and the people once again look to the Misfits and the Royal Aviator Corps to provide them with one.

Many young men and women join the Royal Aviator Corps dreaming of one day being fighter pilots and Britain needs as many of them in the cockpits of Spitsteams and Harridans as it can get. It takes hard work, dedication and not a little talent to become a fighter pilot, though, and many don’t make the grade. The intake of recruits from the Midlands in July 1941 is disappointingly small, with only eight cadets joining up and only six of them wanting to be pilots. Will any of them prove that they have what it takes to form part of the front line of defence of the Kingdom of Great Britain ...

The Second Great War is going poorly for the Kingdom of Britain - the British Isles are under siege and the only thing standing between the all-conquering Prussian army and victory is a thin strip of blue water and the gallant men and women of the Royal Aviator Corps. As the battle over the skies of Britain progresses and it looks like the Prussians are going to be as dominant in the air as they were on the fields of the continent, the hopes of the beleaguered nation come to rest firmly on the shoulders of Misfit Squadron, an elite group of pilots who don’t always pay strict attention to ...

The islands of Malta lay squarely across the main shipping lanes supplying the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, crucial to the interests of both the British and the Prussians. When the British receive intelligence that the Prussians are going to escalate the aerial attack on Malta, the War Ministry sends Misfit Squadron to reinforce the defences. Isolated, outnumbered and desperately short on supplies, the Misfits are nonetheless ordered to hold the islands at all cost. Just how high will that cost be, though?

Malta, Cyprus and Greece have fallen, Egypt is under siege and Gibraltar is hanging on by a thread. There are Prussian forces massing across the English channel in preparation for an invasion and no help is coming because Muscovy has its own problems and America has signed a non-aggression pact with Prussia. It seems that the end is fast approaching for the Kingdom of Great Britain and her people do not even have Misfit Squadron to look to, as, just when they are needed the most, they have been disbanded by the Minister for War. However, as the saying goes, “where there’s a will ...

To live in 19th-century Britain was to experience an astonishing series of changes, of a kind for which there was simply no precedent. There were revolutions in transport, communication and work; cities grew vast; and scientific ideas made the intellectual landscape unrecognisable. This was an exhilarating time but also a horrifying one. In his new book, David Cannadine has created a bold, fascinating new interpretation of the British 19th century in all its energy and dynamism, darkness and vice.

In 1856 Paul Du Chaillu marched into the equatorial wilderness of West Africa determined to bag an animal that, according to legend, was nothing short of a monster. When he emerged three years later, the summation of his efforts only hinted at what he'd experienced in one of the most dangerous regions on earth. Armed with an astonishing collection of zoological specimens, Du Chaillu leapt from the physical challenges of the jungle straight into the center of the biggest issues of the time.

After their resounding victory in the skies of Southern England it seems that the Royal Aviation Corps finally has a chance to lick its wounds and rebuild. However, the Prussian Empire’s war machine is unrelenting and, having been turned back from the shores of the British Isles, it turns its hungry gaze eastwards towards Russia. Unwilling to let another friendly power be swallowed by the tide of tyranny that has swept its way mercilessly across Europe, King George VI sends aid in the form of his most effective weapon - Misfit Squadron.

With the weather in the Arctic Circle rendering flying and fighting impossible, the Misfits leave Muscovy and head home, looking forward to a quiet Midwinter. The Prussians, however, have other ideas.

The Victorians invented the idea of the future. They saw it as an undiscovered country, one ripe for exploration and colonization. And to get us there, they created a new way of ordering and transforming nature, built on grand designs and the mass-mobilization of the resources of the British Empire.

Beneath the empire’s polished rails, something ancient stirs—and it’s hungry for more than steam. Disgraced inspector Alaric Voss thought exile had ended his days chasing ghosts. But when a train vanishes without a trace on the Trans-Etherian Line, he’s summoned to the frontier town of Ketter’s Gate. There, he finds a town gripped by fear, an engineer with fire in her veins, and whispers of a conspiracy buried deep in the steel bones of the empire. Riona Flint, brilliant and wary, is searching for her missing father—the chief architect of the railway—and the secrets he left ...

Do you believe in old legends? In an age where steam and steel dominate the world, Victoria, an American heiress and gifted engineer, finds herself betrothed to the enigmatic Prince István of Taliskia, a small Carpathian kingdom. While the alliance promises a lucrative deal and the development of her cherished inventions, mysteries envelop the kingdom and the prince's shadowed past. All of Victoria’s plans are dashed on the wedding day, when a bomb kills her father and leaves her gravely injured. Though her fiancé escapes unscathed and flees back to his country, Victoria is determined ...

Darwin was described by his friend and champion, Thomas Huxley, as a 'symbol'. But what did he symbolize? In Wilson's portrait, both sympathetic and critical, Darwin was two men. On the one hand, he was a naturalist of genius, a patient and precise collector and curator who greatly expanded the possibilities of taxonomy and geology. On the other hand, Darwin, a seemingly diffident man who appeared gentle and even lazy, hid a burning ambition to be a universal genius. He longed to have a theory which explained everything.

In 1910, Mary Acworth Evershed (1867-1949) sat on a hill in southern India staring at the moon as she grappled with apparent mistakes in Dante's Divine Comedy. Was Dante's astronomy unintelligible? Or was he, for a man of his time and place, as insightful as one could be about the sky? As the 20th century began, women who wished to become professional astronomers faced difficult cultural barriers, but Evershed joined the British Astronomical Association and, from an Indian observatory, became an experienced observer of sunspots, solar eclipses, and variable stars.