Roots of Global Connectivity

Telegraph & Telephone

Dmitry Kuznetsov, Sep 28

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Agenda
Setting up Global Connectivity

Brief Review/Previous Conclusions

- Mass Communication
- Assessing Technology
- Printing Press and Print
Telegraph
- Development of Telegraph
- Impact of Telegraph
- Social Shaping of the Telegraph (Empire/Monopoly)

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Agenda
Setting up Global Connectivity

Telephone
- “A Circumventing Technology”
- Mass Communicating via Telephone
Back to the Present
- Where are we now?
- Relevance of Telegraph and Telephone
Conclusions/Administrative Remarks

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 Notable

Mass Communication
Revisiting the Concept

• As opposite of Interpersonal Communication: Communication between two

or more individuals signalling to each other to convey meaning via various
means (Turow, 2020); [Process, Exchange of Information]

• Generally conducted via a Medium: books, newspapers, television, internet

• Transmits a message to a Mass of people;
• Recipients can be geographically dispersed, and anonymous;
• The process of such communication is rapid or even instantaneous;

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Mass Communication
Littlejohn & Foss, 2009, Media and Mass Communication Theories

“The process by which a person, group of people, or large

organisation creates a message and transmits it through
some type of medium to a large, anonymous, heterogeneous
audience. The message is typically rapid and public.”

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Technology & Mass Communication
Enablers and Ampli ers

• Technological inventions enable enhanced transmission of messages;

• They amplify or modify existing patterns and tendencies, rather than entirely
shape our reality;

• Consequences of technologies arise from a mix of a ordances and the

emergent ways in which people make use of them;

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“Machines do not make history by themselves. But
some kind of machines help make different kinds of
histories and different kinds of people than others […].
[They] can and do accelerate certain trends […].”

Douglas (2004 [ 1991], p. 21, as cited in Baym, 2015)

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“Gutenberg invented movable type, but it’s not
exaggeration to say that Medieval Europe
worked for 300 years to invent Gutenberg”

Lienhard, 1992, ac cited in Kovarik, 2016, p. 32

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“What is new in the fifteenth century in Western
Europe is not “the coming of the book” but rather
the coming of a new process for duplicating books”

Eisenstein, 1980, p. 100, emphasis added.

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Printing & Mass Media
What did it do?

• Allowed for mass reproduction of

written media;

• Enabled actors to communicate

with wider audiences;

• Enabled establishment of the

newspaper business;

• Contributed to the development

of scienti c knowledge;

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Circulation

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 Does print enable “rapid” and
“public” mass communication?

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Distance? Speed?

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 Communication =
Transportation?

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Separation
Transportation != Communication

• Before, movement of messages

was dependent on speed of
transportation;

• After, symbols were allowed to be

independently of geography, faster
than any available transport;

• 1890s: 3 Minutes from London to

New York;

• 1890s: 80 Minutes from London to

Hong Kong
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Telegraph

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“It is obvious, at the slightest glance, that this mode
instantaneous communication must inevitably become
an instrument of immense power, to be wielded for
good or evil”

Samuel Morse, 1838, as cited in Kovarik, 2016

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Did Morse Invent it?

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Visual Telegraph
Proof of Concept

• The Napoleonic Semaphone;

• Invented in France, 1792;
• Claude Chappe
• Used extensively by the French
and British military During the
Napoleonic Wars;

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Electrical Telegraph
Initial Attempts

• Cooke & Wheatstone, 1837;

• Five wires and patterns of letters;
• William O’Shaughnessy, 1839;
• Employee of the East India
Company;

• Also used a di erent system;

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So why Morse?

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Morse Code
Great Software

• Invented the “Software” that

made it easy to use telegraphic
devices;

• Simple way of transmitting

messages using bursts of
electricity;

• Dashes & Dots . . . - - - . . .

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Prediction
Morse’s Perspective

• Instantaneous communication will

become an instrument of
immense power;

• In the hands of corporations, it

can lead to monopolisation;

• In the hands of the government

alone, it could become the source
of “vast mischief to the Republic”

• Suggested government oversight.

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‘As early as 1838 Morse anticipated twentieth-century notions of the
"global village." It would not be long, he wrote, "ere the whole surface of
this country would be channeled for those nerves which are to diffuse
with the speed of thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring throughout
the land; making in fact one neighbourhood of the whole country.’

Morse, 1838, as cited by Carey, 1983, p. 308

Divine Telegraph
Ideology & Telegraph (Carey, 1983)

• Religious imagery accompanies the telegraph during its introduction;

• The telegraph was “clothed in the language of religious aspiration and secular
millenarianism;

• “What hath God wrought?” (Morse)

• New technology not “as mundane fact, but divinely inspired for the purposes
of spreading the Christian message, eclipsing time and transcending space”
(Carey, 1983, p. 306).

• Communication was the engine that prompted the ideal of universalism, linking
people, realising Universal Brotherhood of Universal Man
Telegraph & Language
Relaying universal messages (Carey, 1983)

• The wire services demanded a universal, scienti c form of language;

• The telegraph lead to the disappearance of speech that depended on “a more
traditional use of the symbolic” (Carey, 1983, p. 310)

• Perhaps the “origins of objectivity” can be found in the need to make

language adaptable, transportable via the long lines of national telegraph
networks.

• Similar to the e ect of print, perhaps? Or a continuation of it?

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“Improved Means to an Unimproved End”?
Thoreau’s Critique of the Telegraph

• “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas;
but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate”
(1854, cited in Kovarik, 2016, p. 261)

• “As if the main object were to talk fast and not talk sensibly” (ibid.)
• However, others suggested that telegraph not only spread information;
• It also “gave rise to both the modern conception of news and methods of
news gathering” (Czitrom, as cited in Kovarik, 2016, p. 261)
Associated Press et al
How did the Telegraph impact communication?
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“Telegraphy gave rise to both the modern conception
of news and methods of news gathering”

Daniel Czitrom, as cited in Kovarik, 2016, p. 261

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 Changes in Journalistic Style (Kovarik, 2016)
Crimean War (Russel, 1854) US Civil War (Villard, 1861)

Before the Telegraph After the Telegraph

“If the exhibition of the most brilliant “Our troops, after taking three
valour, of the excess of courage, batteries and gaining a great victory
and of daring which would have at Bull Run, were eventually
re ected cluster on the best days repulsed, and commenced a retreat
chivalry can a ord full consolation on Washington.”
for the disaster of today, we can
have no reason to regret the
melancholy loss which we
sustained in a contest with a
savage and barbarian enemy.”

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Standardisation & Timeliness
News After the Telegraph

• Telegraph eased the spread of information, of course;

• Made new functions of communication possible;
• Timeliness became the priority, overtaking record keeping:
• “The present and the past, for the future” was no more.
• Wire services (e.g., Associated Press) were established;
• Dispatches of AP were “more free from editorial comment than most reporting
for single newspapers” (Schudson, 1978, cited in Kovarik, 2016)

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Associated Press & “Objective Journalism”
Michael Schudson (1995) Discovering the News

Schudson discusses the following “Simple” explanation:

• Before 1830s American Newspapers were partisan;

• Associated Press was founded in 1848;
• Gathered news for publication in many newspapers across the country;
• Such newspapers could be ideologically diverse
• Therefore, AP dispatches had to be “more free from editorial comment”

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Did the AP establish the standard
of Journalist Objectivity?

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“AP reporting was “the finest moral concept ever
developed in America and given to the world …
that news must be truthful and unbiased”

Kent Cooper (Member of Associated Press) as cited in Kovarik, 2016, p. 263

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Associated Press & “Objective Journalism”
Michael Schudson (1995) Discovering the News

• However, this perspective is an oversimpli cation with little evidence

(Schudson, 1995, p. 4)

• Late 1800s/Early 1900s:

• Still emphasis on “telling a good story”;
• Sensationalism is still “chief development in newspaper content”;
• Even in NYT, no sharp divide between facts and values;
• The new medium “did not guarantee that the news would be truthful and
unbiased” (Kobarik, 2016, p. 263)
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AP-Western Union Dominance
Monopolisation of US News

• “A product of the times, it also set the pace for there to follow” (Kovarik, 2016,
p. 265);

• Most industries were consolidating in the late 1800s;

• While apparently committed to quality journalism, the organisation held down
competition and suppressed dissent;

• AP’s resistance to competition would not end until 1945, when it lost an
antitrust suit in the US;

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“No paper could be regarded as a newspaper of the day unless it had access to and
published the reports from such an association as [the AP] … For news gathered
from all parts of the country, the various newspapers are almost solely dependent
on such an association, and if they are prohibited from publishing it or its use is
refused to them, their character as newspapers is destroyed and they would soon
become practically worthless”

Illinois/Inter-Ocean v Associated Press, 1900

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Want to learn
more?

• Good overview of the history of

Associated Press Monopoly;

• Presents a US legal scholar’s

perspective.

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 Development of European Telegraph
Context Matter (recalling Social Shaping of Technology)

• Unlike the US, European telegraph developed in closer association with government;
• European Wire Services (Havas, Reuters, Wol ) were seen as semi-o cial agencies
of their respective governments;

• Their reach was thus territorially aligned with their particular states;
• Wol ’s Telegraph Bureau - Northern and Eastern Europe;
• Reuters - The British Empire;
• Havas - Mediterranean and Latin American Regions
• Later this resulted in their cooptation for state purposes (e.g. in Nazi Germany)
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Connecting Empires
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Global Telegraph
Imperial E ort (Knuesel, 2007)

• Submarine Cables had to be built

with copper wires;

• Wires needed to be isolated in

gutta-percha;

• Natural latex from tropical trees;

• Britain dominated submarine
cable manufacturing;

• Why? It controlled access to “The Reels of Gutta-percha Covered Conducting Wire Conveyed into Tanks at the
Works of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, at Greenwich”.
gutta-percha. By Robert Charles Dudley

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ff
Want to learn
more?

• Explore the role of telegraph in

imperialism, focusing on late Qing
China.

• The Opium Wars, Self-

Strengthening Movement ( 強運
動), The Boxer Rebellion (義和團運
動)

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 Impact of the Telegraph
Back To Carey (2005)

• Telegraph is often neglected in examinations of technological development of

the 19th and 20th century.

- Telegraph was dominated by the rst industrial monopoly — Western

Union;

- The rst communications empire — Associated Press;

- The prototype of the many industrial empires that were to follow.
• The telegraph freed communication from the constrains of geography.
• Its principles form the foundation of modern media use and infrastructure
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Telephone

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A Circumventing Technology
Telephone

• Invented in 1876, cooperation of Bell (Inventor) and Hubbard ( nances);

• Direct reaction to the monopoly power of Western Union (A telegraph
company);

• Within 10 years, 150,000 people owned telephones;

• Research into telegraph and telephone electronics enabled other
developments (e.g., Radio);

• According to White (2010), telephone is “the father of broadcasting”

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Telephone as Mass
Communication?

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News and Entertainment by Telephone
1876-1930, as per White (2010)

• New York Time, 1876: “By means of this remarkable instrument, a man can
have the Italian opera, the Federal Congress, and his favourite preacher laid
on his own house”

• Clément Ader (1881): demonstration of music transmission using telephone

lines;

• Bellamy (1888) Looking Backward 2000-1887: A utopian novel that imagined

people having access to music 24/7 using via telephone lines.

• In 1919, the technology was there, but that same technology made radio-
broadcast practical, thus making telephone-based broadcast unnecessary.

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“However, in the end, instead of auditoriums, the long-distance
telephone lines would actually be used to link radio stations
together, to form national networks that allowed citizens to listen
to the distant speeches in the comfort of their own homes.”

White, 2010

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 Théâtrophone
Paris

• Invented by Clément Ader, 1881;

• The rst two-channel audio
system;

• Provided customers with

livestreams of the Paris Opera;

• Coin-operated receivers in hotels,

cafés, clubs and other locations

• Sunset due to Radio &

Photograph
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Budapest Telefon Hirmondo
“Newspaper” without Paper

• Continuous news reports;

• Opera, theatre, poetry readings;
• Lectures and linguistic lessons;
• 1893-1944;
• Budapest, Hungary
• 1925 expanded into radio

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Casual Discussion
5-10 Minutes

• Have you ever used the Telegraph? What have you heard about it prior to this
lecture?

• Do encounter materials from Reuters/Associated Press?

• Do you think digital technologies had an e ect on how news is presented?
• When was the last time you made a “phone call”? What was it for?
• For example, I usually “phone” my bank;
• But I FaceTime/Whatsapp my relatives.
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Back to the Present
Legacy of the Telegraph and Telephone
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A Wired World
Legacy of the Telegraph

• Still in use around the world:

• Uruguay, Russia, Brazil,
Canada, New Zealand, etc.

• Mostly Ceremonial/Novelty
• Forebear of modern networking:
• World still connected by
cables;

• Operating in binary;
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Global News
Legacy of the Telegraph

• News Agencies still play a vital role

in modern journalism;

• Associated Press Still Important:

• 440,000 Stories in 2020;
• Global Coverage; Here it is

• Materials used by many news

organisations;

• Develop News Production

Software (AP ENPS)

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Internationally
Legacy of the Telegraph

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Telephone
Basically all media

• Introduction of cell phones in the

1990s transformed the world;

• In addition to voice, one could

receive photos, text, and video
on demand;

• Graduation from a xed one-to-

one medium to a mass medium;

• The landline telephone is

practically gone;

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Conclusions

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Mass Communication
Technology So Far

• Print allowed for mass

duplication of written material;

• Telegraph enabled global,

instantaneous distribution of
information;

• Telephone enabled multi-media

communication;

• Modern broadcasting is close.

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Social Factors
Recalling Social Shaping

• Form of technological application

dependent on local context:

• US vs European Telegraph;
• Application of Mass Telephony
• Formation of rst media
monopolies;

• Close connection to Imperialism

& Issues of Politics and
Governance
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 Review

Some Questions
Things to think about (From Kovarik, 2016)

The invention: How did Samuel Morse hope that the telegraph would be developed?
What other inventor influenced that idea? (Hint: it involved photography). How did the
business of telegraphy diverge in the US and in Europe later in the 19th century?
The code: How did printing influence the development of Morse code? How did Morse
Code influence other technologies?
The medium and the message: How would Marshall McLuhan have seen the
differences in writing styles between Russell and Villard? Is the medium really the
message?
The monopoly: How did political opponents of the Associated Press – Western Union
monopoly see the problem? What did they think government should do? What was the
role of the telephone in this?
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Next Time: Radio
Rise of Broadcasting
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Some Admin

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Essay 1: Media Log
Reminder about guidelines + student questions

• Deadline: Oct 19; Good idea to start this week.

• Guidelines are available on Blackboard;
• Do you need to include the media log? Sure, you can add it as an appendix;
• Do I have to answer every question in the guidelines? Not necessarily;
• Does my writing need to be formal? Formal - yes, impersonal - no. This is not
a true “academic” essay, but an exercise aimed at encouraging you to
personally re ect on your media use;

• Other questions? Email me.

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Thank you!
I do read the comments

• Questions about readings?

• Suggestions for the course?
• Fill in the form: https://forms.gle/
GjgP5hJLCWU8T6wx9

• Or e-mail me:
dmitrykuznetsov@cuhk.edu.hk

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