The Roots of Modernity
3.1 Developmental Deadlock
National Assembly and the geopolitical upheavals of the previous year. Tensions between the public and the private sector had been sidelined, but governments now faced the prospect of collaboration and conflict with their neighbours, and the spectre of domestic consumer demand and parliamentary pressure loomed ominously on the horizon.
introduced in the spring of 1847.¹¹ In Hanover, the state expressed its intention to run trials along the section of its earliest railway line leading to Harburg, and in Mecklenburg, a company envisaged making a similar installation on the line between Schwerin and Hagenow.¹² Wherever railways were constructed, it was now expected that telegraph lines would follow, ensuring their smooth and safe operation.
Along the North Sea coast, the success of the telegraphic connection between Bremen and its port in Bremerhaven, opened to the public on 1 January 1847, had created demand for a similar service among the mercantile and shipping com- munities in its sister city of Hamburg. Although Hamburg possessed a privately run optical telegraph connection to its harbour in Cuxhaven, the advantages of the electrical system were increasingly patent.¹³ The mutual trading interests of the twoHansecities were recognized, and plans were drawn up for yet another private enterprise to establish a telegraph line linking Bremen, Bremerhaven, Cuxhaven, and Hamburg.¹⁴
Together, the state and the private sector had thus far contributed to the technology’s overall development, but their diverging aims were increasingly apparent. Only in Austria had the haphazard construction of private and state- owned telegraph lines already given way to a more coordinated division of labour.
On 16 January 1847, it was established that‘no private party, neither an individual nor a company, will be allowed to establish telegraphs without prior permission from the Kaiser himself’.¹⁵ Somewhat in advance of its German neighbours, moreover, the Austrian government had already begun to establish a number of connections to the important regional centres of the Habsburg Empire. On 23 January 1847, the telegraph between Vienna and Brünn (Brno) was demonstrated in front of the Kaiser, and by November the line had been extended to Prague. In the meantime, plans were drawn up to link the capital city to Pressburg (Bratislava), where the Hungarian parliament was due to convene.¹⁶
In Bavaria, however, the friction between the government and Carl Steinheil had brought developments to a standstill. In principle, both of the region’s existing railways were now owned by the state and, as we have seen, the government had reluctantly granted Steinheil a patent on his invention, in order to obtain his assistance and speed up matters. In January 1846, Interior Minister Abel called for the experiments along the Munich–Augsburg railway to be carried out under
¹¹ F. Weber,Post und Telegraphie im Königreich Württemberg: Denkschrift aus Anlass des Ablaufs der fünfzigjährigen Verwaltung des württembergischen Post- und Telegraphenwesens durch den Staat (Stuttgart, 1901), p. 174.
¹² EBZ, 17 Jan. 1847; 19 Sep. 1847, p. 306.
¹³ StAB, 2-R.15.b.2,Priviligierte wöchentliche gemeinnützige Nachrichten von und für Hamburg, 21 Oct. 1847.
¹⁴ EBZ, 1 Aug. 1847. ¹⁵ EBZ, 21 Feb. 1847.
¹⁶ G. Lobentanz,‘Zur Geschichte der Telegraphie in Österreich: Von den Anfängen bis ca. 1850’
(PhD Thesis, University of Vienna, 1967), pp. 28–31.
Steinheil’s supervision, but nothing, it seemed, could go according to plan. To begin with, some railway personnel were injured when electricity struck them through the telegraph wires during a thunderstorm. Over the course of the following year, Steinheil attempted to resolve the issue himself, before finally conceding that the best solution would be to adopt a method of wire insulation used in Austria.¹⁷Afire then broke out in the Munich railway station, destroying the building and bringing the trials to an abrupt end.¹⁸
Despite these obstacles, by June 1847 the Foreign Ministry, under whose authority the technology fell, believed that a satisfactory conclusion had been reached but that no decisions should be made until the administration had completed its report.¹⁹Although the report highlighted the success of Steinheil’s installation as a whole, it nonetheless recommended postponing any final deci- sions until a number of further technical issues were resolved. In line with the report’s recommendations, King Ludwig I ordered that the trials be reprised, and his personal interest in the matter once again led him to press the administration for updates on the situation.²⁰As theEisenbahn-Zeitungreported, by December 1847 a new railway station had been built in Munich and trials with Steinheil’s telegraph had been relaunched, but by January 1848 results were still discouraging—weather conditions continued to interfere with the installation, sporadically setting off the telegraph.²¹
As this seemingly incessant cycle of experimentation continued, the minister of the interior pointed out that other states had made more progress. In some places, additional wires were now being laid for the purposes of correspondence, along- side those intended for railway signalling. Given the growing importance of telegraphy as a means of regular communication, the minister recommended calling in an external adviser with the appropriate expertise to supervise the introduction of a similar installation in Bavaria. The king not only approved of this decision but also suggested that they adopt the system introduced in England, where telegraphy was making significant advances. As his annotation indicated, security concerns were at the forefront of his mind:‘The telegraph associated with the railways is almost the only means of arresting criminalsfleeing the police (the poison is its own antidote). In England it is used with success.’²²
Lacking the expertise to make this technical shift, the Eisenbahnbau- Kommissionwas sent on a tour of foreign countries to determine which system to adopt. In its report, the commission considered the advantages and
¹⁷ BHStA, MH 16863, Abel to Ludwig I, 13 Jan. 1846; DMM, FA005/582, Erdinger to Steinheil, 18 July 1846; DMM, FA005/582,‘Bericht des K. Bahnamtes München’, 18 May 1847. The method in question was the use of porcelain‘bulbs’.
¹⁸ BHStA, MH 16863, MInn to Ludwig I, 26 June 1847.
¹⁹ BHStA, MH 16863, MA to MInn, 7 June 1847.
²⁰ BHStA, MH 16863, MInn to Ministerial-Referent, 13 Nov. 1847.
²¹ EBZ, 10 Jan. 1848; BHStA, MH 16863,‘Antrag des Ministers des Innern’, 8 Jan. 1848.
²² BHStA, MH 16863,‘Antrag des Ministers des Innern’, 8 Jan. 1848.
disadvantages of a number of mechanisms developed by William Fardely, Samuel Morse, the Scotsman Alexander Bain, and the Saxon Emil Stöhrer. Whatever the commission’s choice of apparatus, however, the report also pointed out that their actions were constrained by the terms of the Privilegium granted to Steinheil, which explicitly covered all devices which used the earth as a conductor in the electrical circuit. As this was now common practice and had been adopted by many inventors outside Bavaria, none of the proposed mechanisms could be introduced without infringing Steinheil’s rights. It was therefore recommended that no action be taken until hisPrivilegiumexpired on 30 August 1849.²³
In Prussia, progress had similarly stalled, as the authorities struggled to deter- mine the state’s and the private sector’s respective jurisdiction in the construction and use of telegraph lines. In June 1847, theTelegraphen-Kommission reported that ‘different railway companies, such as the Niederschlesich-Märkische, the Berlin-Potsdamer-Magdeburger, the Berlin-Hamburger, the Köln-Mindener, and the Stargard-Posener are only waiting for the state authorities’ permission to make such installations’.²⁴ The conditions, established on 27 August 1847, guaranteed the state not only the right to install wires alongside those of the companies but also that the latter should be obliged to transmit state telegrams free of charge.
These terms were to be a continued source of friction and no doubt exacerbated the ongoing conflict between the government and the railway companies that were suffering from an economic downturn.²⁵ The liberal Eisenbahn-Zeitung, now acting as a mouthpiece for the Verein Deutscher Eisenbahnverwaltungen, expressed the companies’frustration at the situation in Prussia:‘The government is now eagerly pursuing the installation of electromagnetic telegraphs. It had hoped to attribute the task to the railway companies, but set them such conditions that, we are told, most of them would prefer entirely to abandon such a project. As the state principally hopes to use the telegraph for its own purposes, so it seems natural for it to build them independently and at its own cost, while providing for the railways, who give their tracks and other installations for the purpose, a necessary telegraphic connection for their service.’²⁶ The existing rift between the parties had been widened by the diverging applications of the telegraph which they had in mind.
A similar deadlock had emerged between the state and the private sector in other parts of Germany. In Hessen, for instance, the trials using Drescher’s
²³ BHStA, MH 16863,‘Bericht der Eisenbahnbau-Kommission’, 12 May 1848.
²⁴ W. Löser,‘Die Rolle des preuβischen Staates bei der Ausrüstung der Eisenbahnen mit elektrischen Telegraphen in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts’,Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. 4 (1963), pp. 196–8.
²⁵ J. M. Brophy, Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830–1870 (Columbus, 1998), pp. 42–9.
²⁶ EBZ, 14 Nov. 1847.
apparatus were abandoned when the government insisted that telegraph lines, established at the expense of the railway company in question, were to remain in state hands. Criticizing the decision, the Eisenbahn-Zeitung reported that ‘this condition convinced the company to forego the electric telegraph altogether, and to settle, for now, on exchanging hand signals from one railway operator to another’.²⁷ The cooperation which had prevailed in the early 1840s was unravelling fast.
On 16 March 1848, two days before the eruption of hostilities in Berlin, the Prussianfinance minister Franz von Düesberg moved to defuse the situation. For the sake of expediency, theNiederschlesisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaftwas permitted to install a telegraph without respecting all the conditions imposed.²⁸ The logistical separation of railway and state telegraphy had begun, but the Prussian Telegraphen-Kommission had yet to answer a number of technical questions.
Meanwhile, Werner Siemens had been busy attempting to establish his repu- tation with both theTelegraphen-Kommissionand the railway companies intend- ing to build telegraphs along their lines. By now, he was convinced that he had made a considerable impression upon‘high society’—indeed, in his memoirs, he would later claim that his chances of obtaining a position as future director of the state’s telegraph line at this stage had been almost guaranteed.²⁹But the commis- sion was also assessing other options. The apparatuses constructed by Siemens’s competitors Ferdinand Leonhardt and August Kramer were still under consider- ation. Along the Cologne–Minden railway line, for instance, it had been deter- mined that Leonhardt’s was best.³⁰ In late 1847, therefore, the commission decided to set up a contest between a number of telegraph apparatuses drawn from across the world, in order to select the best option for its purposes. The competition, by a twist of fate, was to take place in March 1848. As far as Siemens was concerned, however, it was a mere formality and would serve primarily to guarantee that he received contracts from the state,‘without appearing to consti- tute both judge and jury’.³¹
Having initially sought to take advantage of a vibrant market, Siemens now struggled to juggle his different potential contracts with the state and private railway companies. Writing to his brother around this time, Siemens explained his situation:‘As I don’t want to lose the state telegraph (postal telegraphy throughout Prussia) out of my hands, I have little or no time at all left for the installation of railway telegraphs here, nor for foreign matters.’³² As the needs of his potential
²⁷ EBZ, 11 Sept. 1848. ²⁸ Löser,‘Die Rolle des preuβischen Staates’, p. 204.
²⁹ W. von Siemens,Lebenserinnerungen, ed. W. Feldenkirchen (Munich, 2008), p. 99.
³⁰ EBZ, 28 Feb. 1848.
³¹ Werner to Wilhelm, 6 Nov. 1847, in C. Matschoβ(ed.),Werner Siemens. Ein kurzgefaβtes Lebensbild nebst einer Auswahl seiner Briefe(2 vols., Berlin, 1916), i, p. 47.
³² Werner to Wilhelm, 20 Dec. 1847, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, pp. 49–51.
clients diversified, the multitude of opportunities he had relished now began to constitute a challenge.
The disturbances which erupted in Berlin in March 1848 initially served only to enhance the atmosphere of uncertainty. As political gatherings turned into dem- onstrations calling for constitutional reform and then violence when weapons were discharged, Werner, witnessing the events, wrote to his brother excitedly that
‘the two accidental shots fired on the Schloßplatz have, in one leap, pushed Germany forwards a generation’. As for the planned competition, however, he was left in the dark.³³ Although the telegraph commission was by no means dissolved, all activities, as far as Siemens was aware, had been suspended, and the Siemens & Halske manufacture continued to turn out apparatuses without receiving anyfirm orders. As the political turmoil grew, Werner waited in vain to be asked to discharge his duties as an officer, and with the prospect looming of conflict between Denmark and Prussia, Siemens appeared to abandon his entre- preneurial activities.³⁴Having communicated with his sister and brother-in-law in Kiel, where the threat of war was acutely felt, he travelled to the northern coast, driven by a sense of duty, national pride, and concern for his family. But the outbreak of hostilities also provided him with another opportunity for experi- mentation and publicity: he proposed and constructed a set of electrically deton- ated naval mines in defence of Kiel harbour.³⁵
Back home, meanwhile, the telegraph commission’s contest planned for 15 March 1848 was not, as Siemens surmised,‘brought to an abrupt end’.³⁶A report from the commission, presented on 13 June 1848, indicates that the trials did indeed take place. As the report indicated, however, the disturbances had led a number of foreign competitors to withdraw from the competition, leaving Siemens to face only home-grown apparatuses. The principal challenger, it seems, was August Kramer, long identified by Siemens as a key competitor, and Ferdinand Leonhardt, his erstwhile colleague and earliest collaborator in the field.³⁷The upheavals of 1848 tipped the balance in Werner Siemens’s favour.