Laszlo Solymar’s book is quite unique in the sense that it is the only one that covers all the major developments in the history of telecommunications for the past 4,000 years, like fire signals, the mechanical telegraph, the electrical telegraph, telephony, optical fibres, fax, satellites, mobile phones, the Internet, the digital revolution, the role of computers, and also some long-forgotten technologies like news broadcasting by a devoted telephone network. It tells the technical aspects of the story but also how it affects people and society; e.g.it discusses the effect of the electric telegraph on war and diplomacy, how thanks to the telegraph Kitchener could preserve the Cairo-to-Cape Town red band for the British Empire, or more recent events like the effect of deregulation upon the monopoly of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). A number of anecdotes are told, e.g. how one murderer was caught by telegraphy when he arrived at Paddington Station and how another murderer was caught by wireless telegraphy when tried to escape by boat from Britain to Canada. The last chapter is concerned with the future: how the future was envisaged in the past and how we imagine the future of telecommunications now.