The world’s first hack: the telegraph and the invention of privacy (2015)

“By the turn of the century, business users were concerned about privacy, and cable companies were therefore keen to ensure they knew anything sent by cable was secure,” says John Packer, honorary curator of the Telegraph Museum and a lecturer from the museum’s previous life as a telegraphy teaching school. The Eastern Telegraph Company, with a global hub in Porthcurno, absorbed a stream of companies connecting the British Isles to everywhere from South America to India, forming a near-monopoly over international security had spread across the globe, but it wasn’t until a rival technology appeared that communications privacy was fully articulated as a concept within the public imagination. When John Tawell travelled from Slough to Paddington, his pursuers were able to use the telegraph to send a message faster than the train he rode on.

Source: www.theguardian.com