Book excerpt: Modern communications allow the instant dissemination of information and images, creating a sensation of virtual presence - or 'contemporaneity' - at events that occur far away. But how were time and space conceived before modernity? When did this begin to change in Europe? To help answer such questions, this volume looks at the exchange of information and the development of communications networks at the dawn of journalism, when widespread public and private networks first emerged for the transmission of political news. The collection offers the first panoramic view of the way stories were born, grew and matured during their transmission from source to source, from country to country. The results published here suggest that a continent-wide network, including manuscript and print, for the transmission of stories from place to place, existed and was effective.