More:

https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteenth-line/dp/162040592X

Quotes from Chapter 8: "Love over the Wires":

During quiet periods, however, the online interaction really got going, with stories, jokes, and local gossip circulated over the wires. According to one account, "stories are told, opinions exchanged, and laughs enjoyed, just as if the participants were sitting together at a club." In some cases the tales passing over the wires would find their way into the local newspapers. Most did not because, according to Edison, they were far too smutty or anatomically explicit.

"Romances of the Telegraph, " an article published in Western Electrician in 1891, tells the story of a "pretty little romance" that took place at a remote station out in the desert at Yuma, Arizona, near the border with Mexico. "A more uninviting place of abode could scarcely be found. The station consists merely of a big water tank, a rough shed called the telegraph office, and another shed in which half a dozen trackmen live. During the summer months life at the little desert station was almost unbearable." There was nothing to do, it was unbearably hot and very difficult to sleep, so unsurprisingly the operator at the station, John Stansbury, turned to the telegraph wire for companionship.

An acquaintance soon sprung up between Stansbury and the operator in Banning, California, known as "Mat," whom Stansbury described as a "jolly, cheerful sort of fellow." They soon became firm friends and agreed to spend their vacation together in the mountains hunting and fishing. Every detail of the trip was arranged, with Mat insisting that they take rubber boots for fishing, even though Stansbury said he was quite happy in his bare feet. But at the last minute Mat pulled out of the trip, having decided to take the train to vacation in New Mexico instead, a trip that involved passing through Yuma, Stansbury's station. But by the time Mat arrived at Yuma, Stansbury had been taken ill with a fever and was quite delirious.

"During the days of my agony I was vaguely aware of gentle, womanly hands and a kindly female presence in my sick-room," Stansbury later wrote. "And when I returned to the conscious world I was not surprised to find a fair and pleasant face beside me. Its owner said that she had been on the train when I was found stricken down, and had stayed to minister to my sore need. The idea may seem preposterous, but I believe the foundation for my affection had been laid while the unconsciousness of fever was still upon me, and the affection grew into the deepest love as she cared for me during the days of my convalescence. After a time I ventured to tell her of my love, and to ask her if she would be mine; but I was not prepared for her answer. 'John,' she said, 'do you really mean that you wish to marry a girl that insists upon wearing rubber boots?'

" 'Mat!' I said, for I was completely beaten. Then it flashed upon me. She was the operator at Banning, and I, like a fool, had always taken it for granted that she was a man. I am not going to tell you how I convinced her that I wanted to marry her, boots, and all, but I did it, and here we are on our wedding journey. The Southern Pacific Telegraph Company has lost an operator, but I calculate that I am ahead on the deal."

Minnie Swan Mitchell, a young operator in the 1880s, recalled that "many a telegraph romance begun 'over the wire' culminated in marriage." Ella Cheever Thayer's 1879 novel Wired Love even built its plot around an online courtship.

Inevitably, some ill-starred on-line romances had repercussions in the real world. One such cautionary tale was described in "The Dangers of Wired Love," an article published in Electrical World in 1886. It concerned George W. McCutcheon of Brooklyn, who ran a newsstand assisted by his twenty-year-old daughter, Maggie. Business was booming, so he decided to install a telegraph line, with Maggie as its operator. But he soon discovered that she was "keeping up a flirtation" with several young men over the wires, including Frank Frisbie, a married man who worked in the telegraph office of the Long Island Railroad. Over the wires , Maggie invited Frisbie to visit her, and he accepted. When her father found out, he forbade the visit. Maggie began seeing Frisbie on the sly. McCutcheon tried moving his newsstand, but Maggie soon found work in a nearby telegraph office and resumed the relationship. Eventually, her father pursued her to a rendezvous and threatened to "blow her brains out." She had him arrested, and he was charged with threatening behavior.

The telegraph could also bring together operators working in the same ofnce. "Making Love by Telegraph," another article published in Western Electrician in 1891, tells the story of a particularly difficult wire in the New York telegraph station that was connected to a number of district railway offices manned by inexperienced and often incompetent operators. As a result, most operators rapidly lost their temper whenever they tried to work the wire: "It did not matter how good an operator was or how hard he tried to get along, his patience could not stand the strain for more than a few minutes." But there was one female operator who never had any trouble, so she ended up working the wire. One summer a new operator arrived and was assigned to cover the wire during her lunch hour. He was a good-tempered man, but within ten minutes of taking his station he was involved in "a red hot row" with one of the rural operators. It lasted until the young woman got back, when she graciously straightened matters out. The same thing happened day after day, and after a while the young man started to fall in love with the woman. He realized that "nothing short of an angel could work that wire, and he cultivated her acquaintance. They have been married a long time now," the article concludes, "and he has told the secret to his friends matrimonially inclined, and a number of them have been watching that wire ever since. No young woman has remained there for any length of time, and the watchers all know what it means."

[Thomas] Edison's ability arose from his partial deafness, which meant that he was not distracted by background noise as he sat listening to the clicks of the telegraph receiver. In later life, he even turned his deafness to his advantage when courting his second wife, Mina. "Even in my courtship my deafness was a help," he wrote in his diary. "In the first place it excused me for getting quite a little nearer to her than I would have dared to if I hadn't had to be quite close in order to hear what she said. My later courtship was carried on by telegraph. I taught the lady of my heart the Morse code , and when she could both send and receive we got along much better than we could have with spoken words by tapping out our remarks to one another on our hands. Presently I asked her thus, in Morse code, if she would marry me. The word 'Yes' is an easy one to send by telegraphic signals, and she sent it. If she had been obliged to speak it, she might have found it harder."