Yet it would be difficult to overstate the telegraph's role in the transformation of the nineteenth-century world. Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers (London, 1999).
The Roots of Modernity
The Horizon of Telegraphic Communication
An anonymous publication of the same year further emphasized the tension between the interests of the state and those of society as a whole. 35 On the efforts of German intellectuals to reconcile the dynamism of a self-directed economy with state administration in the early nineteenth century, see K.
Managing Expectations
Under circumstances other than mine, he thought that the theory of electromagnetism would allow for many applications of social importance and practicality dazzling in the eyes of the masses. It was also in 1835 that Carl August Steinheil of the Bavarian Academy der Wissenschaft traveled through Göttingen.
Circulating Knowledge, Enrolling Support
It is unclear why Steinheil was reluctant to follow Weber's advice, but he was also clearly aware of the risks involved in addressing different audiences. High visions of the nature and purpose of technology provided a leitmotif throughout its development.
Confronting Reality
It testifies to the staying power of the original expectations associated with technology as they were confronted with reality. For rail companies, the more immediate use of technology probably required a smaller leap of faith. Steinheil, apparently, had not realized the logistical utility of the telegraph for the railroad company itself.
The Hanseatic Exception
In Bremen, the mouth of the Weser River was the lifeline of both the elite merchant community and the city-state as a whole, which depended on maritime trade. Like the railway companies elsewhere in Germany, merchants and shipowners saw the immediate utility of the telegraph to their existing operations. Moreover, the results of the trials undertaken by private companies significantly informed the decisions made by state commissions investigating the technology.
Between Interests, Expertise, and Authority
With the creation of the Königliche Eisenbahnbau-Kommission zu Nürnbergin 1841, the state moreover prepared the ground for its ownership of the railways. The governments of both Prussia and Austria had experience in the field of optical telegraphy, which was placed firmly under the authority of the state. As the finance minister's commissioner explained in July 1847: 'The decision on the organization of the state telegraph may continue for some time.
The Landscape of Innovation
Across Germany by 1847, the development of telegraphy involved many different actors who were encouraged to participate in the financial, logistical and technical management of the process. ⁶⁰ These numbers were determined on the basis of lists of contents and a review of each volume of the DPJ between 1830 and 1880 (vols. 35–238). For example, after reading reports in the Allgemeine Zeitung about improvements in technology by the Englishman Mr. Highton, King Louis I asked the Akademie der Wissenschaften to inquire into the matter.7³.
Strategies of Innovation: Werner Siemens
He collaborated with Siemens in designing a mechanism to measure the speed of projectiles, and was soon tinkering with an imported model of Charles Wheatstone's telegraph apparatus on behalf of the telegraph commission.⁹². Having shown little interest in the case up to that point, in early July 1846 Werner Siemens attended one of the hearings conducted by Leonhardt at the home of HofratSoltmann, the father of one of his brigade comrades. made mistakes he couldn't explain. On the one hand, he began to persuade key members of the Prussian Telegraphen-Kommission to invest in his telegraph apparatus, and Major O'Etzel became his.
The Hanseatic Exception
The Senate's response to the request reaffirmed the mutual interests of the government and its merchant community in the city-state. In defense of the electromagnetic system, one article highlighted its year-round reliability and the uninterrupted service it can provide. It would take the upheavals of mid-century to resolve many of the tensions that developed.
Developmental Deadlock
In principle, both of the existing railways in the region were now owned by the state and, as we have seen, the government had reluctantly granted Steinheil a patent on his invention to get his help and speed things up. As this seemingly never-ending cycle of experimentation continued, the Secretary of the Interior pointed out that other states had made more progress. Since this was now common practice and had been adopted by many inventors outside of Bavaria, none of the proposed mechanisms could be introduced without infringing Steinheil's rights.
Resolutions
The potential utility of the telegraph was clearly understood by the deputies meeting in the Paulskirche. But it also showed how the volkswirtschaftlicher Ausschuβ conceived the goals of the communication infrastructure. In this regard, the commission showed its strong support for the objectives of the National Assembly.
The Hanseatic Exception
On the other hand, he evoked its 'implication for the independent position of the State in relation to the Telegraph Institute'. The telegraph therefore revealed the divergence between the city's commercial and political foci, heralding the disintegration of its 'cosmopolitan society' as it was tied to new German industries and markets.¹²². When the telegraph came into operation throughout Germany, the domestic pressures of the development process, which had seemed to have been resolved, reappeared in a new form.
Establishing Priorities
It was in the nature of technology to make a binary distinction between those included in and those excluded from the network, and throughout the period hopes were raised by the promise of instantaneous communication over long distances matched by fear of being denied access to the service. He was confident in the technology's potential, but it was based on "wonderful expectations" rather than any hard evidence.2⁴Pfordten himself admitted that "actual demand cannot yet be precisely determined," and it was therefore "all the more the wiser to gradually complete the telegraph network, as more experience and new improvements are put into operation'.2⁵ Parliamentary deputies recognized that 'the more this institution is expanded, the more its use will become possible and many inhabitants of our particular homeland will receive considerable benefits'.²⁶This put the state in a rather awkward situation: the existing demand was not only impossible to estimate, but would itself be generated by the provision of the service. In the upper house of the Bavarian parliament, a member stressed that it was "necessary that the government, especially in these turbulent times, should quickly learn about all developments in the larger courts of Germany and Europe", as well as internal events.³¹ In fact yet, the Reichsräte added to the bill a requirement that "the royal state government establishes by treaty a connection with neighboring states and a uniform tariff."³² Ultimately, the draft provided for lines to Salzburg in Austria, Lindau on Lake Constance , Ulm in Württemberg, Frankfurt am Main, Hof towards Saxony and Prussia, and finally, at the urging of a member of the Staatsrat, Passau as a fortress and further point of contact with Austria.³³.
Policing the State
When the regional government in Ansbach asked its subordinate departments to report on their potential use of the technology, the Nuremberg Magistrate replied that its use. Access to the telegraph, it seems, was often requested on a precautionary basis to bolster the confidence of the authorities in their ability to manage unexpected situations. For example, the Regierungspräsidentin Breslau who asked for access to the telegraph to monitor local unrest admitted that he had not once used the service.
Confronting Demand
Between 1850 and 1854, the main branches of the network were rapidly built, and by 1855 the funds devoted to the cause were exhausted. The Oettingen-Wallerstein request sparked a series of debates in the Bavarian parliament regarding the shape and priorities of the telegraph network and the state's ability to provide adequate communications infrastructure. Lerchenfeld feared that the state would now be expected to 'install telegraph offices in all parts of the heavens'.93.
The Telegraphic Sphere
- News and Public Opinion
- Business and Finance
- Rhythms of Communication
The Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Manteuffel soon made the telegraph a central part of the network for collecting and disseminating information around the Literarisches Kabinett. Business use of the telegraph was fueled by and in turn reinforced its dependence on the timely and reliable receipt of information. According to the Neue Frankfurter Zeitung, an overall reduction in the cost of the telegraph service could not account for the varying value different users placed on fast communication.
The Ambiguities of Progress
In particular, fluctuations in the stock market have fueled the concern of businessmen and traders. Shionoya, The Soul of the Historical School: Methodological Essays on Schmoller, Weber, and Schumpeter (Boston, 2005), p. New Era' in the field of politics, but the growing power of the Wirtschaftsbürgertum was felt everywhere.
The Subtle Triumph of Liberalism
As another deputy said, 'as long as the countryside does not participate in the telegraph network, this important contemporary invention has not become the common property of the nation'.³³. To some extent this expansion was linked to the growth of the railway network, whose telegraph lines could now be used for public correspondence. These measures helped to ease the burden that the expansion of the network placed on government finances.
Connections and Complications
The International Telegraph Union that grew out of these meetings was the largest international organization of the period, designed to apply one way or another. Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of the Prussian General Staff who came to dominate the military scene in these years of unification, remained skeptical about the usefulness of the technology. In 1868, the company's London and Berlin branches founded the Indo-European Telegraph Company, bringing Siemens to the ranks of the multinational corporations that would shape the world's future.
The Telegraphic Sphere .1 Finance, News, and Government
- Public Opinion
Nalbach, ““The Ring Combination”: Information, Power, and the World News Agency Cartel PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1999), p. So what an extraordinary influence the telegraph agencies have!' wrote the historian Heinrich Wuttke in 1866. 'They have the means to direct public opinion even before it is aware of the facts. A caricature of conservative perceptions of the influence of news on the course of politics, the paper announced that the "true causes of our disputes" were: "The press; because it didn't print everything right away, no one would find out; the angry men on Dönhofsplatz; because if they didn't find out what's rotten in the state, no one would worry about it; the Telegraph; because if it didn't always spill the beans on everything right away, that would be nice!' (see Figure 5-2).¹⁴³ Technology, it seemed, had disturbed the harmony of a political system based on the power of the state to control the dissemination of information, and its attempts to regain control became the object of of satire.
Administering Time and Space