Global personal communications, as seen in 1861 by essayist Andrew Wynter

The Nervous System of the Metropolis, from Andrew Wynter, MD, 1861:

By combining beforehand different lines in this manner, two different persons may converse together across the island, sitting in their own drawing rooms; nay by only extending the connection of these lines with the submarine cables across the sea, a person may converse with his friend traveling day by day at the other end of the globe, provided only that he keeps on some telegraphic line that is continuous with the main electric trunk lines of the world. This may appear to be an idle dream but that it will certainly come to pass we have no manner of doubt whatever.

Wynter was a medical man and essayist; his The Electric Telegraph gives an 1860 view of the British telegraph network, prefiguring global communications:

America will shortly carry her line of telegraph to the Pacific shore, and run it up the coast as far as San Francisco. Can there be any reasonable doubt that, before the end of the century, the one line advancing towards the West and the other towards the East — through China and Siberia — will gradually approach each other so closely that a short cable stretched across Behring Straits will bring the four quarters of the globe within speaking distance of each other, and enable the electric fire to " put a girdle round the world in forty minutes?"