New book on David Edward Hughes

[Dan Worrall]

Some of you may remember the article I wrote in 2007 for PICA on David Edward Hughes (1829-1900), an American-English child prodigy on the English concertina and later an extraordinary Victorian inventor who had much to do with the coming of the Communication Age (an updated version of the article is available for free download at my website, http://angloconcertina.org/Hughes.html ). A new, highly detailed biography of Hughes is now available here http://www.imagesfromthepast.com/ and at Amazon. Written by Ivor Hughes and David Ellis Evans, it is getting some very good reviews.

 

The book's title is Before We Went Wireless:

David Edward Hughes FRS His Life, Inventions, and Discoveries (1829-1900)

 

Cheers,

Dan

Edited January 30, 2011 by Dan Worrall

[Dan Worrall]

Some of you may remember the article I wrote in 2007 for PICA on David Edward Hughes (1829-1900), an American-English child prodigy on the English concertina and later an extraordinary Victorian inventor who had much to do with the coming of the Communication Age (an updated version of the article is available for free download at my website, http://angloconcertina.org/Hughes.html ). A new, highly detailed biography of Hughes is now available here http://www.imagesfromthepast.com/ and at Amazon. Written by Ivor Hughes and David Ellis Evans, it is getting some very good reviews.

 

The book's title is Before We Went Wireless:

David Edward Hughes FRS His Life, Inventions, and Discoveries (1829-1900)

 

Cheers,

Dan

Hmmm...not a lot of interest from Forum folks in this new book! Oh well.

 

Ivor Hughes, the Welshman living in the US who researched and wrote the book, has just released a charming Youtube video about his new book that shows a lot of fascinating photos of Hughes and his many inventions, including the first wireless that he built and used for a mobile phone call on Great Portlandt Street in London in the late 1870s, many years before Marconi. There also is the drawing (that I had also included in my article) of Hughes as a lad with an English concertina (on which he was a child prodigy and one of the earliet professional players); I am still maintaining that that is the earliest image of anyone playing the English concertina, anywhere (another image, also in my article, is I think the oldest image of a concertina player in a band!).

 

Ivor's video is well worth any concertina player's time, even though Ivor doesn't mention much if anything about Hughes the musician in the video (presumably he does in the book!).

[michael sam wild]

Hmmm, Now if that guitar soundtrack was to be replaced by one by you on concertina!

Edited February 5, 2011 by michael sam wild