Juan Monroy — Media Technologies: Telegraph and Telephone

Optical Telegraphy
- visual signals
- line of sight
  - ship-to-shore
  - overland
- relay stations
- optical code
The Vatican
- ancient announcement system
- visible throughout Rome
- selection of Pope Francis, 2013
- signal: plume of smoke
  - black: “no Pope"
  - white: “Pope!!”
Optical telegraphs
- largely used in military campaigns
- heliograph
- Greeks used naval flag semaphore system in Peloponnesian War
- Roman army used a “box cipher” system with two torches
Napoleonic Semaphore
- Claude Chappe
- France, 1792–1840s
- semaphore arms
- messages could be sent in 5–10 minutes
Napoleonic telegraph
- important for military strategy
- relay network
- messages could be sent in 5–10 minutes
- used until 1840s because…
Electromagnetic Telegraph
- Steven Gray sent an electrical current through a line, 1727
- William Fothergrill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, England, 1837
- William O’Shaughnessy, British India, 1840s
- polarized electrical signal
  - - postive
  - - negative
- signal would travel by wire
Morse Code
- Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail, 1837
- bits
  - long short
  - dot-dash
- alphanumeric bytes
  - series of dots-dash
  - E: ., T: -
  - Q: —.-, Z: —..
“What Hath God Wrought”
- Congress financed experimental line between Washington and Baltimore
- first message sent between Morse and Alfred Vail
- May 1, 1844
- used over B&O railroad right-of-way
- sent message: “What Hath God Wrought?”
- Morse formed the Magnetic Telegraph Co.
- 12,000 miles of telegraph line, by 1850
International Growth of Telegraph
- Britain
- Germany
- France had a late start because of the optical telegraph
- undersea cable between London and Paris, 1850
- Cyrus Field and the transatlantic cable, 1858–1866
“Instant Communication”
- ease spread of information
- made new functions of communication possible
- newspapers
  - emphasized timeliness
  - standardized information
- wire services
  - Associated Press, 1851
  - condensed style
  - emphasized facts over opinion or storytelling
Telegraph Monopolies
- trust
  - Western Union
  - Associated Press
- agreements with railroads
- theft of secret stock information
- exclusion of competitors
- set the pace for “trusts” in other industries: sugar, oil, railroads, and motion pictures
Other News Wire Services
- Europe
  - Havas, France, 1845
  - Reuters, England, 1851
  - Wolff, Germany, 1849
  - Fabra, Spain, 1865
- United States
  - United Press International, E.W. Scripps, 1907
  - International News Agency, Hearst, 1909
Victorian Internet
- Thomas Standage
- connection and interconnection
- nineteenth century
- annihilation of…
  - space
  - time
Commodities Markets
- prices were based on local market conditions
- distant conditions would keep pricing local
- eliminated arbitrage
- established futures pricing
- space would be annihilated
Standard Time
- local meridians, usually a church or town square
- each railroad had its own time zone until 1883
- telegraph synchronized time across various regions
  - International Meridian in Greenwich, October 1884
  - U.S. Standard Time Act, 1918
- time would be annihilated
Invention of telephone
- improvement to the existing telegraph
- vocal sounds over electrical current
- a case of simultaneously discovery
- coincidentally patented February 14, 1876
- technology to circumvent the telegraph monopoly
Alexander Graham Bell
- teacher of deaf students
  - professor of elocution
  - wife and mother were deaf
- developed telephone to amplify voice
- worked on a harmonic telegraph
  - “phonautograph”
  - sound waves
  - electrical currents
Elisha Gray
- started Western Electric, 1865
- simultaneous discovery of telephone
- filed patent caveat on same day as Bell filed patent
Patent Battle
- common in the 19th century
- February 14, 1876
- liquid transmitter
  - Bell’s patent application
  - Gray’s patent caveat
- Patent granted to Bell, March 7, 1876
- March 10, 1876
  - “Mr. Watson, Come Here.”
Philadelphia Exposition
- Centennial exposition
- 1876
- Bell publicly introduced the telephone telephone
- “My God, it talks”
- telephone became a popular hit of the exposition
Western Union
- rebuffed Bell’s $100,000 offer
  - later seen as short-sighted
  - enabled Kronos effect
- established own competing service
  - sued by Bell for patent infringement
  - lost to Bell and exited telephone business
Bell Telephone
- local exchanges
- patents expired
- emergence of competitors
- bought out competing services
- established long-distance network
American Telephone and Telegraph
- formed 1885
- parent company of Bell Telephone
- campaign to undermine competition
  - denied access to long-distance lines
  - sold competitors equipment that infringed on Bell patents
AT&T the Monopoly
- Justice Department investigated AT&T for anticompetitive tactics
- Theodore Vail, “One Policy, One System, Universal Service” (1907)
  - claimed a natural monopoly
  - anti-trust exemption
- Kingsbury Commitment (1913)
  - allowed AT&T to operate a regulated monopoly
  - universal service
  - closed network
Western Electric
- phone manufacturing
- launched by Elisha Gray, 1865
- supplied electrical equipment to Western Union
- sold to Western Union, 1875
- acquired by AT&T, 1881
Bell Laboratories
- founded 1925
- research and development
- originated some of the biggest innovations of the 20th century
  - radio astronomy
  - transistor
  - laser
  - charge-coupled device (CCD)
  - Unix operating system
  - C, C++, and S programming languages
Breakup of AT&T
- “natural monopoly” since 1913
  - local telephone
  - long-distance
- US Justice Department
  - sued AT&T, 1974
  - ordered its break up, 1982
- broken up in 1984
  - seven “Baby Bells”
  - AT&T retained long-distance market
  - new long-distance competitors
Effects of AT&T Breakup
- New Hardware
  - Fax machines
  - Answer machines
  - Touchtone telephones
  - Modems
- Long Distance Competition
Telecommunications Act 1996
- Replaced Federal Communications Act
- consolidated telecommunications industries
  - local telephone
  - long distance telephone
  - multichannel video
  - wireless telephone
Reorganization
- Baby Bells grew after Telecommunications Act
- Three major companies
  - Verizon
  - Qwest
  - AT&T, formerly Southwest Bell
- reach expanded to wireless (mobile) telephone