Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
self-reinforcing, autocatalytic loop that sustained and enhanced the advan-
tages of large urban centers on the East Coast. The fact that the U.S. played a
central role in the emergence of modern telecommunications was hardly
coincidental or the benign outcome of “Yankee ingenuity.” Beniger (1986)
emphasizes that the development of long-distance means of communications
in the U.S. such as the telegraph and telephone re
fl
ected a “crisis of control”
within far-
ung systems of production and consumption, in which the
coordination and management of distribution systems and acquisition of up-
to-date information arose as pressing social predicaments far more than they
did in Europe.
The
fl
first line across the English Channel, laid in 1852, initiated a boom in
underwater telegraphy. The
fi
first transatlantic telegraph cable was completed
on August 18, 1868, connecting Ireland with Newfoundland (although it
soon failed), leading the London Times to claim that “Since the discovery of
Columbus, nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the vast
enlargement which has thus been given to the sphere of human activity”
(quoted in Standage 1998:83). This process, incidentally, led to the
fi
fi
rst maps
of the ocean
floor. The new technology was expensive, at $10 per word in
1858, although prices quickly dropped, to $5 in 1872, to 50 cents in 1884, and
25 cents in 1888 (Hugill 1999), generating a cost-space compression that
multiplied the number of users exponentially.
Telegraphy was also deeply entwined with national political aspirations.
Hugill (1999:36) notes that “Telegraphy's ability to control space for eco-
nomic and military purposes in the interests of the state made it as pure
a form of geopolitics as any.” Britain,
fl
flush with investment capital from
the Industrial Revolution and its exploitation of one-quarter of the world,
came to play the lead role in international telegraphy by securing the
construction of the world's
fl
first global telecommunications infrastructure,
including dominant ownership in the shares of most leading international
telegraph providers and in cable-laying companies. Telegraph lines formed
the nervous system of the British Empire, starting with the Indo-European
Telegraph that linked London to India in 1865. The British government
sponsored the “all red” telegraph system, so named because it made landfall
only in red-colored places on maps that were part of the empire (Kennedy
1979). By 1874, the system was global in scope, with 650,000 miles of terres-
trial wire, 30,000 miles of submarine wire, and “messages could be tele-
graphed from London to Bombay and back in as little as four minutes”
(Standage 1998:102), forming history's
fi
first true global communications net-
work. In 1910, the British controlled 260,000 miles of international telegraph
lines, or half of the world total, as well as the vital copper and gutta-percha
markets necessary for their production. The British monopoly over submarine
telegraphy played a major role in determining the outcome of World War I
(Hugill 1999).
Soon telegraphy became a normal part of everyday life for millions, at least
for those living in the world's core countries. By bridging space e
fi
ff
ortlessly, by
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