Arthur C Clarke is surely most famous today as a science fiction author, so it came as some surprise to me that he was not only an accomplished nonfiction author, but also an academic whose thesis on satellite communication laid the groundwork for all satellites today. As a writer, he uses a playful and heroic tone, like Bill Bryson or similar authors who value delivery of information over cold, hard facts.

The writing throughout is very accessible and mostly enjoyable. Starting with the story of the first few transatlantic cable attempts and their failures, Clarke tells the story up to the eventual successes and on into the 20th Century telephone cables and radio satellites. He writes with humour and wit, creating characters from historical figures, although he did tend to sugar-coat many of these people, or denigrate some, making heroes and villains of historical figures. To his enormous credit, Clarke was clearly deeply knowledgeable on communications technologies, forming links that only a very well informed author could.

Like many books of the past (this was originally published in the 1950s), it is a relic itself and is both interesting as a research work and as a snapshot of how a male British writer thought at that time. As such, he also includes some howlers of "jokes" that would have been unacceptable to many in the 1950s and are totally abhorrent now (such as one about the poor behaviour of a Chilean "Indian" boy, for example). And I don't remember a single mention of any woman in the book, even to acknowledge their keeping families of all of the "important men", a shortcoming I'd hope would not happen today.