T e l e g r a p h, T e l e p h o n e & W i r e l
e s s:
How Telecom Changed the World
by Bert Lundy
Why I wrote the book
In 1988, after getting my PhD, I began my career as
a researcher and teacher in computer networks. I was excited about beginning my
career, and wanted to learn about the history of networks and telecom, but I
could not find any one book which covered it. There were many books about
pieces of it, but no recent books (since about 1936) on the overall history of
telecom, in a single book. So I decided to write it myself.
It turned out to be a much bigger job than I had
imagined (this is probably the experience of all first time book authors). I worked on it on and off for years,
having learned a lot about the history, but having only written about 25 pages.
Finally around the end of September, 2006, I decided to work on it seriously
and try to complete it in 18 months. It took me about 2 years to finish the
writing, then another 3-4 months to get it formatted (I did the typsetting myself
using Latex) and published.
I think that the book will be useful to anyone
interested in telecom, in technology history, or government policy. I wrote it
to appeal to a broad audience, and I believe it is educational and interesting
for students from high school through grad school, and many others.