The Landscape of Innovation

The Roots of Modernity

2.2 The Landscape of Innovation

Across Germany, by 1847 the development of telegraphy had enrolled many different actors, encouraging them to cooperate in the financial, logistical, and technical management of the process. As they had done so, however, they had also sketched out the boundaries separating their respective spheres of interest, author- ity, and expertise, causing friction between them. The problem was widespread in Europe: in Britain, the relationship between Cooke and Wheatstone was famously fraught, both claiming priority in inventing the telegraph and negotiating deals with railway companies; in France, attempts by the existing telegraph adminis- tration to introduce the electric system in 1842, supported by the scientist François Arago, were thwarted by parliament’s fear that it would threaten national security.⁴⁶ In Germany, the rubbing of interests and personalities was soon to become problematic.

Versailles, as well as Saint-Germain. Even the Austrian government was planning a number of railway telegraph connections, he explained.⁵¹

Public and private channels thus intersected in stimulating the telegraph’s development across Europe during the 1830s and 1840s. Through newspapers, journals, letters, and face-to-face interactions, information was being exchanged between monarchs and ministers, engineers and entrepreneurs, scientists and civil servants, connecting numerous hubs of knowledge production and consumption scattered across a broad landscape of innovation. As this‘useful knowledge’was shared, discussed, and modified, the contours of a newfield of expertise began to emerge.

The Prussian state’s efforts to remedy its industrial‘backwardness’in relation to Western Europe are well documented. Whether by means of espionage and official visits, or by subsidizing apprenticeships abroad for students of state institutions such as theGewerbe-Institut, various strategies of‘technology transfer’ had been employed to import the requisite knowledge and materials.⁵² The practice continued in the 1840s, and both the Prussian and the Bavarian embassies implanted across Western Europe were repeatedly called upon to obtain infor- mation locally on the development of the telegraph.⁵³ Despite the considerable amount of home-grown talent in thisfield, England, in particular, shone like a beacon of progress in the landscape and was the prime destination for techno- logical pilgrimages.

Notwithstanding Steinheil’s own work, for instance, and no doubt due to his strained relations with the Bavarian government, Friedrich August Pauli travelled to England in 1843/4 and reported back that Wheatstone’s invention there had been‘brought to a level of perfection, which leaves little more to be desired’.⁵⁴In the summer of 1845, Johann Wilhelm Wendt, the captain, entrepreneur, and engineer behind Bremen’s trials in electrical telegraphy made his second journey to England for the same purpose.⁵⁵A few years later,HofratWilhelm Eisenlohr was sent from Baden to discuss telegraphy with Charles Wheatstone himself.⁵⁶ Not all pilgrims travelled with the support, or on behalf, of state institutions, however: the Anglo-German engineer William Fardely, for his part, had moved to England in 1840 specifically for the purpose of training as a‘telegraph engineer’,

⁵¹ BHStA, MH 16863, Abel to Ludwig I, 13 Jan. 1846.

⁵² W. Weber, ‘Preussische Transferpolitik 1780 bis 1820’, Technikgeschichte, vol. 50 (1983), pp.181–96; W. Weber‚ ‘Industriespionage als Technologie Transfer in der Frühindustrialisierung Deutschlands’,Technikgeschichte, vol. 42 (1975), pp. 287–305.

⁵³ The Prussian reports, for instance, are collected in GStA I.HA Rep.120 HA Handelsamt, Nr.179.

⁵⁴ BHStA, MH1 16863, Abel to Ludwig I, 13 Jan. 1846.

⁵⁵ StAB, 2-R.15.b.1, Petition to Senat, 28 Oct. 1845.

⁵⁶ R. Seidel,‘Verkehrsmittel Telegraph: Zur Geschichte der Telegraphie im 19. Jahrhundert bis 1866 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Raumes Hannover–Bremen’ (PhD Thesis, University of Hanover, 1980), pp. 142–4.

and he published a translation of some of Wheatstone’s work upon his return in 1844.⁵⁷

Theflow of information from abroad was also supported by a growing litera- ture on the topic. The role of the Allgemeine Zeitung in spurring the Bavarian authorities to emulate developments abroad, for instance, hints at the increasingly open market on which ideas were now exchanged. The point was expressed to the Bavarian king by his envoy Graf von Luxburg, when he expressed his admiration for the new technology: ‘These new telegraphic means of connection transmit messages to and from the furthest points with the speed of a lightning bolt.’He assumed that the king had already ordered his administrators to collect informa- tion on all new inventions and discoveries in thefield of railway construction, as well as to submit all relevant literature and newspaper articles to expert examin- ation, adding: ‘In this regard, secrecy rules nowhere, everything is accessible to everyone [!]’⁵⁸

The information they sought was certainly out there, as a periodical culture strengthened its hold on practices of scientific communication.⁵⁹ Dinglers Polytechnisches Journal, in particular, was a crucial vehicle for foreign knowledge into the German-speaking world. Of the sixty-four articles on telegraphy which it published between 1840 and 1847, just over half (thirty-three) were drawn from British journals, especially the Mechanics’ Magazine. A further eighteen were taken from French journals, among them the Echos du monde savant, the Comptes rendus, and the Moniteur industriel. As far as can be ascertained, only nine articles were either purpose-written or drawn from another German- language source. All nine articles in question dealt with developments occurring in Germany itself or with German individuals’contributions to the technology.⁶⁰ Of course, this bias was partly a result of the editor’s strategy of providing access to those sources most difficult for his readers to obtain, and only since the late 1830s hadDinglersbegun to rely on German sources for its articles.⁶¹ On the other hand, the disproportion also supports the argument that by the early 1840s German technical literature lacked not so much in variety as in the quantity of original contributions.⁶² The journal also served more practical purposes, in that it regularly recorded patents which were issued on inventions abroad. In its early

⁵⁷ V. Aschoff,Geschichte der Nachrichtentechnik, vol. 2,Nachrichtentechnische Entwicklungen in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 2nd edn. (2 vols., Berlin, 1995), ii, pp. 173–80.

⁵⁸ BHStA, MHI 16863, Graf von Luxburg to Ludwig I, 16 June 1845.

⁵⁹ Christina Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach,Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein(2 vols., Chicago, 1986), i, pp. 34–9, 114–28; L. U. Scholl,Ingenieure in der Frühindustrialisierung: staatl. u. private Techniker im Königreich Hannover u. an d. Ruhr (1815–1873)(Göttingen, 1978), p. 274; F. Fischer,‘Dinglers Polytechnisches Journal bis zum Tode seines Begründers (1820–55)’,Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, vol. 15 (2007), pp. 1027–142, here pp. 1029–36.

⁶⁰ Thesefigures were established on the basis of the contents listings and an overview of each volume ofDPJbetween 1830 and 1880 (vols. 35–238).

⁶¹ Fischer,‘Dinglers Polytechnisches Journal’, pp. 1040–3, 1080–2, 1092. ⁶² Ibid., p. 1095.

years, these had constituted its main source of information on technological developments outside Germany.⁶³ Over time, however, they also enabled keen German innovators to evaluate their potential market—it was widely held, for instance, that England liberally granted patents to foreign as well as native inventors.⁶⁴

The information contained in periodicals such asDinglerswas also collected in particular sites. The PrussianTechnische Deputation, for instance, bore responsi- bility for the evaluation of patent applications sent from any private citizen. In the early 1840s, theDeputationreceived applications from foreign agents requesting permission to import telegraph apparatuses, but also proposals for innovations in telegraphy from merchants and even high-school teachers such as August Kramer in Nordhausen.⁶⁵When evaluating these applications, officials could turn to an extensive literature contained in its library, of which a catalogue published in 1853 gives an outline. The ‘Repertorium der technischen Literatur’ lists 113 journals published between 1823 and 1853, containing articles on an enormous variety of topics.⁶⁶TheDeputationhad become a crucial hub in the Prussian and German landscape of innovation, a repository of knowledge and a nexus between the state and amateur or professional inventors within society.

Of the journals recorded in theRepertorium, around forty-nine were German- language publications (including Austria–Hungary and Switzerland), and sixty- four were published both abroad and in a foreign language.⁶⁷Britain and France loomed large, with twenty-seven and twenty-five publications respectively, fol- lowed far behind by francophone Switzerland (five) and the USA (four).⁶⁸Over the period 1823–53 covered by the catalogue, a total of 190 articles were recorded under the heading‘Telegraphie’. Of these, as far as can be ascertained, eighty-five were published exclusively in foreign-language journals. A further sixty-seven were published in both German-language and foreign journals, primarily British and French publications.Dinglershad publishedfifty-four of these, further con- firming its importance in the transmission of news from abroad. Thus, 152 of a total of 190 articles were almost certainly of foreign origin.⁶⁹

Only thirty-eight articles appear to have been drawn exclusively from German sources, usually other journals or newspapers, or purpose-written pieces.

Narrowing down the interval to the period 1823–47, however, wefind that only nine articles were of exclusively German origin, the remainder published between 1847 and 1853.⁷⁰Despite the various trials taking place in Germany at the time, therefore, publications on the topic appear to have been more widespread in Britain and France at an earlier date.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 1089. ⁶⁴ ibid., p. 1089.

⁶⁵ See the reports in GStA, I.HA Rep.120 MfHuG, D XIV 2, Nr.16, Bd.1–9.

⁶⁶ E. L. Schubarth (ed.),Repertorium der technischen Literatur, die Jahre 1823 bis 1853 einschl.

umfassend(Berlin, 1853), pp. iii–xvi.

⁶⁷Ibid. ⁶⁸Ibid. ⁶⁹ Schubarth,Repertorium, pp. 874–8. ⁷⁰Ibid.

Overall, the bias in the literature in favour of foreign knowledge was contrib- uting to a perception of backwardness, whatever its basis in reality. In 1847, Dinglersreproduced an article which had been published in a supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung, and which expressed this ambiguity, both evoking the region’s potential head start in telegraphy and the implicit anxiety that this advance may be lost: ‘It is to be hoped that in our time of newly blossoming German national sentiment there will be enough participation in the German spirit of invention and German industriousness in affairs in which our fatherland not only does not lag behind the best of that abroad, but is everywhere well ahead.’⁷¹

In Bavaria too, innovation was supported by a nexus of people and institutions.

ThePolytechnischer Verein, as evoked earlier, was composed of both state officials and private citizens, and was charged with the assessment of patent applications.

The society’s Kunst- und Gewerbe-Blatt served to diffuse knowledge of these patents, as well as other developments which its members found noteworthy.

The journal testifies in particular to Carl Steinheil’s active participation in other fields of engineering, and records at least one of thePrivilegienwhich he received on optical instruments.⁷² But advice was also sought elsewhere in the govern- ment’s efforts to keep up with developments. After reading reports of the Englishman Mr Highton’s improvements to the technology in the Allgemeine Zeitung, for instance, King Ludwig I asked theAkademie der Wissenschaften to inquire into the matter.⁷³

The articles published inDinglers, meanwhile, also point to the changing con- tours of thefield of telegraphy. As before, some contributors proposed particularly ambitious innovations. In 1841, for instance, the Swiss physicist Jean-Daniel Colladon was exploring the possibility of transmitting sound through water.⁷⁴In 1846, a certain Romershausen suggested that his‘telephone’—a system based on the transmission of speech through underground tubes—was more secure than electric telegraphs, whose wires could easily be damaged, and that it would be of particular use‘to public and commercial exchanges’[für den bürgerlichen und commerciellen Verkehr].⁷⁵Compared with the 1830s, however, the majority of articles had come to focus more specifically on the concrete developments and trials which were taking place in thefield of electrical telegraphy throughout Europe and the USA.

In 1838,Dinglersthus informed its readers of both Steinheil’s experiments and Charles Wheatstone’s planned trial along the Great Western Railway in London.⁷⁶

⁷¹ Anonymous,‘Telegraphie in Deutschland’,DPJ, vol. 105 (1847), pp. 457–9.

⁷² ‘Gemeinnützige Mittheilungen und Bekanntmachungen’,KGB, vol. 14 (1836), p. 340.

⁷³ BHStA, MH 16863, Vorstand der Akademie der Wissenschaften to Ludwig I, 4 Feb. 1847.

⁷⁴ D. Calladon,‘Ueber den Schall im Wasser; Ein Schreiben des Hrn. Daniel Calladon an Hrn.

Arago’,DPJ, vol. 82 (1841), pp. 226–30.

⁷⁵ E. Romershausen,‘Über das Telephon’,DPJ, vol. 99 (1846), pp. 413–15.

⁷⁶ Anonymous, ‘Elektrischer Telegraph an der Great-Western-Eisenbahn’, DPJ, vol. 70 (1838), p. 235; Anonymous,‘Über Steinheil’s elektro-magnetischen Telegraphen mit betreffenden historischen Notizen’,DPJ, vol. 67 (1838), pp. 388–400.

Between 1838 and 1845, this was followed up by a furtherfive articles tracing the improvements which Wheatstone and his collaborator Cooke later made to their system. Further reports included descriptions of the American Samuel Morse’s telegraph in 1839 and 1846, of the trials conducted on David Hansemann’s railway between Aachen and the Belgian border in 1843, of those taking place in France on the Paris–Rouen railway line in 1845, of the experiments taking place in Bavaria, as well as of those carried out by William Fardely along the Taunus- Eisenbahnin 1846.⁷⁷These experiments were more than local affairs, therefore, their results being communicated to the broader interested public.

Both in Germany and abroad, the vast majority of articles on telegraphy were still published in relatively wide-ranging,‘polytechnical’journals. This reflected thefluidity of the engineering community that was only then emerging through- out Europe and America, and the slow onset of professionalization around mid- century.⁷⁸It also demonstrates that thefield of‘telegraphy’remained considerably broad. There was no dedicated German-language journal for specialists in the technology until 1854, when the Zeitschrift des Deutsch-Österreichischen Telegraphen-Vereins was first printed. The only two articles published in Dinglers between 1840 and 1847 which were drawn from specialist journals— whether German or foreign—came from theArchiv für Eisenbahnen, afield which had already received much greater attention and investment from both the state and the private sector.⁷⁹

At this stage, telegraphic technology was often discussed in the context of railway engineering, which was a recognized field of expertise. Until the first report of Charles Wheatstone’s experiments on the Great Western Railway in 1838, only one mention had been made of the possible use of telegraphy for railways.⁸⁰By the 1840s, the twofields had become almost indistinguishable, as articles reported either on existing trials along particular railway lines or on proposals for telegraphic forms of railway signalling. The use of electrical teleg- raphy for ordinary correspondence was occasionally evoked, but such concerns had taken a back seat. In any case, there was still too little differentiation in the operation of telegraph lines for railway signalling or for ordinary communication—the two aims were complementary. As the railway sector grew

⁷⁷ Anonymous,‘Über Morse’s elektromagnetischen Telegraphen’,DPJ, vol. 72 (1839), pp. 221–2;

Anonymous,‘Morse’s elektromagnetischer Telegraph’,DPJ, vol. 99 (1846), pp. 48–55; Anonymous,

‘Elektrischer Telegraph auf der Eisenbahn von Aachen zur belgischen Grenze’,DPJ, vol. 89 (1843), pp. 256–6; Anonymous,‘Arago, über elektrische Telegraphen’,DPJ, vol. 96 (1845), pp. 486–9; Oscar v.

Schllerer, ‘Über Sicherheitsvorrichtungen an den Ausweichstellen der Eisenbahnen’,DPJ, vol. 99 (1846), pp. 242–7; Anonymous,‘Der elektrischer Telegraph auf der Taunus-Eisenbahn’,DPJ, vol.

101 (1846), pp. 478–80.

⁷⁸ K. Gispen,New Profession, Old Order: Engineers and German Society, 1815–1914(Cambridge, 1989), pp. 7–56.

⁷⁹ Anonymous,‘Cooke’s elektro-magnetischer Telegraph’,DPJ, vol. 89 (1843), p. 317; Anonymous,

‘Elektrischer Telegraph auf der Eisenbahn von Aachen’.

⁸⁰ Anonymous,‘Eisenbahnen in Verbindung mit Telegraphen’,DPJ, vol. 56 (1835), p. 74.

in importance, however, and its objectives diverged from those of the state, a further zone of friction would emerge between them.

The apparatuses developed during this period reflected these trends. This was the era of theZeigertelegraph, or pointer-telegraph, developed specifically for its simplicity and ease of use by untrained railway personnel. Although slower than the original needle-telegraphs developed by Cooke and Wheatstone in Britain, even the latter turned to this design in 1840, recognizing the greater reliability of the pointer systems. While other ‘printing’ and ‘needle’ telegraph apparatuses continued to be developed during the early 1840s, the best-known names in the field—Leonhardt, Stöhrer, Fardely, and Siemens—all also constructed and trialled pointer-telegraphs during this period.⁸¹ When William Fardely evoked the possi- bility of introducing printing telegraphs more adapted to the use of governments, he added that this was to be an accessory to the signalling mechanisms installed.⁸² Attention was thus increasingly towards the needs of the railways, specifically.

Optical telegraphs, meanwhile, were still in operation, and proposals for their modification and improvement were also put forward. A certain G. A. Treutler, in particular, crops up repeatedly in contemporary literature as well as archival material. Having applied to the PrussianTechnische Deputation for a patent on his optical telegraph in 1842, his proposal was under consideration two years later.⁸³ In the face of competition from new telegraph mechanisms, even Treutler had now adapted his system to the purposes of railway signalling, arguing that his contraption was more reliable than the recent electrical fad. On the basis of the PrussianDeputation’s assessment, Treutler’s optical telegraph was in use along the Nuremberg–Bamberg line in Bavaria in 1845 and would continue to arouse interest until the end of the decade.⁸⁴Even as trials using the electric telegraph continued along the Munich–Augsburg railway in 1846, the Bavarian adminis- tration was considering his proposal.⁸⁵ The same year, Treutler published an article inDinglersemphasizing the indispensability of optical telegraphs alongside the railways.⁸⁶The older technology had not yet drawn its last breath and had been adapted to the needs of the sector most interested in telegraphy.

The development of the telegraph was thus dependent upon an expanding knowledge market. Supported by a periodical technical literature in particular, but also by the press, individual travel, and channels of diplomatic correspondence, information on the technology circulated between key people and places across Germany, Europe, and, to a lesser extent, the United States. As ideas were

⁸¹ Aschoff,Geschichte der Nachrichtentechnik, ii, pp. 162–89.

⁸² BHStA, MInn 45175/1, William Fardely to Ludwig I, 30 June 1843.

⁸³ GStA, I. HA Rep. 120 MfHuG D XIV 2 Nr. 16, BD. 1,‘Patentgesuch’, Nov. 1842; cf. Anonymous,

‘Treutler’s Tag- und Nacht-Telegraph’,DPJ, vol. 98 (1845), pp. 417–21.

⁸⁴ BHStA, MH 16863,‘Bericht der Eisenbahnbau-Kommission’, 17 Oct. 1845; see also BHStA, MHI 16863, Treutler to Ministerium des Innern, 9 Apr. 1847.

⁸⁵ BHStA, MH 16863, Ministerium des Äusseren to Ministerium des Innern, 6 Feb. 1846.

⁸⁶ G. A. Treutler,‘Über Signale auf Eisenbahnen’,DPJ, 99 (1846), pp. 84–93.

exchanged, the boundaries of an emergingfield came into sharper focus. Initially encompassing the complementary aims of railway signalling and ordinary cor- respondence, distinctfields of specialization were slowly emerging.