This is a nice article about early communications using electrical circuits, but doesn't deliver on the promise of the title. For that I recommend "The Early History of Data Networks" by Gerard Holzmann (<a href="http://spinroot.com/gerard/hist.html" rel="nofollow">http://spinroot.com/gerard/hist.html</a>) or the short paper "Data Communications: The First 2500 Years" (<a href="http://spinroot.com/gerard/pdf/hamburg94b.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://spinroot.com/gerard/pdf/hamburg94b.pdf</a>).