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A Comparison of the Postal Telegraph Movement in Great Britain and the United States, 1866–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

David Hochfelder
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Extract

This article places the British and American postal telegraph movements in the broader context of a transatlantic reform tradition. More specifically, British nationalization in 1870 gave American reformers both a rallying point and a rationale for postalizing the telegraphs. The legacies of both movements were mixed. In Britain, the postal telegraph provided inexpensive and accessible service, but it soon ran a large deficit and retarded the development of the telephone industry. In the United States, reformers failed to nationalize the telegraph or to secure a place in historical memory, but they succeeded in pressuring Western Union to provide better service, and they provided the impetus for the municipal ownership movement of the Progressive Era.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 739 - 761
Copyright
Copyright © Enterprise and Society 2000

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