Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:30:24.415Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Telecommunications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Richard R. John
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The half-century following the Civil War witnessed an epochal transformation in American telecommunications. In the 1870s, the telegraph network became a spawning ground for a remarkable spate of inventions that included the phonograph and the telephone, and around 1900 the telephone network became the first electrical communications medium that network providers intended to be accessible to the entire population. This transformation was a centerpiece of the still unprecedented burst of inventive activity that economic historians call the Second Industrial Revolution.

Type
Roundtable Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 507 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Berk, Gerald. Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of American Industrial Order, 1865–1917. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Caporoso, James A., and Levine, David P. Theories of Political Economy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1991.Google Scholar
Dunlavy, Colleen A. Politics and Industrialization: Early Railroads in the United States and Prussia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Edling, Max M. A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Einhorn, Robin L. American Taxation, American Slavery. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Einhorn, Robin L. Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833–1872, 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Fischer, Claude S. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Henkin, David M. The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Herring, James M., and Gross, Gerald C. Telecommunications: Economics and Regulation. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1936.Google Scholar
Hibbard, Angus. Hello Goodbye: My Story of Telephone Pioneering. Chicago, IL: A. C. McClurg, 1941.Google Scholar
Howe, Daniel Walker. What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004 [1989].Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Israel, Paul. Edison: A Life of Invention. New York, NY: Wiley, 1998.Google Scholar
John, Richard R. Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi R. The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Misa, Thomas J. Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865–1925. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Mueller, Milton L. Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making ofthe American Telephone System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Page, Arthur W. The Bell Telephone System. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941.Google Scholar
Platt, Harold L. The Electric City: Energyand the Growth ofthe Chicago Area, 1880–1930. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Smith, George David. The Anatomyofa Business Strategy: Bell, Western Electric, and the Origins ofthe American Telephone Industry. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Starr, Paul. Creation ofthe Media: Political Origins ofModern Communications. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2004.Google Scholar
Thompson, Robert Luther. Wiring a Continent: The History ofthe Telegraph Industry in the United States, 1832–1866. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947.Google Scholar
Usselman, Steven W. Regulating Railroad Innovation: Business, Technology, and Politics in America, 1840–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Vietor, Richard H.K. Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Wilson, Mark R. The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1850–1880. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.Google Scholar

Articles and Essays

Berg, Maxine, and Bruland, Kristine. “Culture, Institutions, and Technological Transitions.” In Technological Revolutions in Europe: Historical Perspectives, edited by Berg, Maxine and Bruland, Kristine, 3–14. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1998.Google Scholar
Blondheim, Menahem. “Rehearsal for Media Regulation: Congress versus the Telegraph-News Monopoly, 1866–1900.” Federal Communications Law Journal 56 (March 2004): 299–327.Google Scholar
Carlson, W. Bernard. “Innovation and the Modern Corporation: From Heroic Invention to Industrial Science.” In Science in the Twentieth Century, edited by John Krige and Dominique Pestre, 203–26. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishing, 1997.Google Scholar
Carlson, W. Bernard. “The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardiner Hub-bard and the Formation of the Middle Class in America, 1875–1880.” In Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha ChipleyHughes, edited by Michael Thad, Allen and Gabrielle, Hecht, 27–55. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Cronon, William. “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative.” Journal ofAmerican History 78 (March 1992): 1347–76.Google Scholar
Du Boff, Richard B. “The Rise of Communications Regulation: The Telegraph Industry, 1844–1890.” Journal of Communication 34 (Summer 1984): 52–66.Google Scholar
Du Boff, Richard B., and Herman, Edward S. “Alfred Chandler’s New Business History: A Review.” Politics and Society 10 (1980): 87–110.Google Scholar
Gabel, David. “Federalism: An Historical Perspective.” In American Regulatory Federalism and Telecommunications Infrastructure, edited by Paul, Teske, 19–31. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert J. “Does the ‘New Economy’ Measure up to the Great Inventions of the Past?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14 (Autumn 2000): 49–74.Google Scholar
Hochfelder, David Paul. “Constructing an Industrial Divide: Western Union, AT & T, and the Federal Government, 1876–1971.” Business History Review 76 (Winter 2002): 705–32.Google Scholar
John, Richard R. “Le Debat sur la Telegraphie Publique aux Etats-Unis.” Reseaux 17 (1999): 391–411.Google Scholar
John, Richard R. “The Politics of Innovation.” Daedalus 127 (Fall 1998): 187–214.Google Scholar
John, Richard R. “Private Enterprise, Public Good? Communications Deregulation as a National Political Issue, 1839–1851.” In Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History ofthe Early American Republic, edited by Pasley, Jeffrey L., Robertson, Andrew W., and Waldstreicher, David, 328–54. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.Google Scholar
John, Richard R. “Recasting the Information Infrastructure for the Industrial Age.” In A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present, edited by Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., and Cortada, James W., 55–105. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
John, Richard R. “Theodore N. Vail and the Civic Origins of Universal Service.” Business and Economic History 28 (Winter 1999): 71–81.Google Scholar
Kipping, Matthias. “Business-Government Relations: Beyond Performance Issues.” In Business History around the World, edited by Amatori, Franco and Jones, Geoffrey, 372–93. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
MacDougall, Robert. “The People’s Telephone: The Politics of Telephony in the United States and Canada, 1876–1926.” Enterprise & Society 6 (December 2005): 581–87.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel A. “The Political Economy of Technological Change: Resistance and Innovation in Economic History.” In Technological Revolutions in Europe: Historical Perspectives, edited by Maxine, Berg and Bru-land, Kristine, 39–64. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1998.Google Scholar
Mueller, Milton L. “Universal Service in Telephone History: A Reconstruction.” Telecommunications Policy 17 (July 1993): 352–69.Google Scholar
Nonnenmacher, Tomas. “State Promotion and Regulation of the Telegraph Industry, 1845–1860.” Journal of Economic History 61 (March 2001): 19–36.Google Scholar
Priest, George L. “The Origins of Utility Regulation and the ‘Theories of Regulation’ Debate.” Journal of Law and Economics 36 (April 1993): 289–323.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda. “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research.” In Bringing the State Back In, edited by Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, 3–37. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Sylla, Richard. “Experimental Federalism: The Economics of American Government, 1789–1914.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, edited by Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E., vol. 2, 483–541. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996-2000.Google Scholar
Usselman, Steven, and John, Richard R. “Patent Politics: Intellectual Property, the Railroad Industry, and the Problem of Monopoly.” In Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth Century America, edited by John, Richard R., 96–125. University Park, PA. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.Google Scholar

Magazines

Nation. (1872).Google Scholar
Operator. (1875).Google Scholar

Dissertations

Beauchamp, Christopher. “The Telephone Patents: Intellectual Property, Business, and the Law in the United States and Britain, 1876–1900.” PhD dissertation, Cambridge University, 2006.Google Scholar
MacDougall, Robert. “The People’s Telephone: The Politics of Telephony in the United States and Canada, 1876–1926.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2004.Google Scholar
Maguire, Meighan Jeanne. “The Local Dynamics of Telephone System Development: The San Francisco Telephone Exchange, 1893–1919.” PhD dissertation, University ofCalifornia at San Diego, 2000.Google Scholar
Sicilia, David B. “Selling Power: Marketing and Monopoly at Boston Edison, 1886–1929.” PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 1990.Google Scholar

Government Documents

Jackson, Dugald. Report on the Telephone Situation in the City of Chicago … Chicago, 1907.Google Scholar

Archival Sources

Western Union Records. Archives Center, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Wisconsin Telephone Company Records. AT & T Archives and History Center. San Antonio, Texas.Google Scholar