Map Love

This 1901 map from the Eastern Telegraph Company is an interesting view of how the world communicated back then. The red lines are telegraph cables.

From wikipedia:
Oceanic telegraph cables
The first commercially successful transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed on 18 July 1866. The lasting connections were achieved by the ship SS Great Eastern, captained by Sir James Anderson.[11] Earlier transatlantic submarine cables installations were attempted in 1857, 1858 and 1865. The 1857 cable only operated intermittently for a few days or weeks before it failed. The study of underwater telegraph cables accelerated interest in mathematical analysis of very long transmission lines. The telegraph lines from Britain to India were connected in 1870 (those several companies combined to form the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1872).

Australia was first linked to the rest of the world in October 1872 by a submarine telegraph cable at Darwin. Further advancements in telegraph technology occurred in the early 1870s, when Thomas Edison devised a full duplex two-way telegraph and then doubled its capacity with the invention of quadruplex telegraphy in 1874. Edison filed for a U.S. patent on the duplex telegraph on 1 September 1874 and received U.S. Patent 480,567 on 9 August 1892.

The telegraph across the Pacific was completed in 1902, finally encircling the world.

Via Boing Boing