[Lanthanide]

It really was, complete with a 1880s-vintage Tinder: http://archive.org/stream/wiredlovearomanc24353gut/24353.txt

I read that a while ago and though the plot itself is kinda facile (it is supposed to be just a simple romance novel after all), it's really fascinating to see the parallels of the telegraph with the internet from a cultural aspect. It's easy enough to draw comparisons between the two as being different stages in the evolution of networks etc but the human side of things is always a bit harder to sum up.