The Story of Gn: 150 Years in Technology, Big Business and Global Politics

This book tells the dramatic story of the Danish company GN Store Nord and its founder, industrialist and visionary C.F. Tietgen, the forefather of modern communication. C.F. Tietgen and the Great Northern Telegraph Company made history when they set up telegraph cables in China and Japan in 1870-1871 and thus connected the two countries with the rest of the world through the world-wide communication network. Soon transatlantic submarine cables across the Pacific Ocean and North Atlantic Ocean followed. Through the 19th and 20th centuries the company endured rivals, revolutions, and civil wars in China and Russia, conflicts and wars in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia, the terror during Stalin's reign, and not least two world wars and the Cold War up until today's globalised and digitalised world. The story of the book moves through government offices and imperial chambers in China, Russia, Japan, and UK, the construction of telegraph lines in Chinese paddy fields, and cable-laying in unknown waters, travels on horseback through the impassable Siberia, and seminal decisions in contemporary boardrooms.