Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks

by Simone Müller

Overview

The successful laying of a transatlantic cable in 1866 remade world communications. A message could travel across the ocean in minutes, shrinking the space between continents, cultures, and nations. An eclectic group of engineers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and media visionaries then developed this technology into a telecommunications system that spread a particular vision of civilization—but not everyone wanted to wire the world the same way.

Wiring the World is a cultural and social history that explores how the large Anglo-American cable companies won out over alternative visions. Bitter rivalries emerged over telegram prices, visions for world peace, scientific innovation, and the role of the nation-state. Such struggles determined the growth of cable technology, which in turn influenced world history. Filled with fascinating characters and new insights into pivotal events, Wiring the World traces globalization's diverse paths and close ties to business and politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231174329
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Series:	Columbia Studies in International and Global History
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Simone M. Müller is Project Director & Principal Investigator at DFG-Emmy Noether Research Group "Hazardous Travels. Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy" at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Class of 1866
1. Networking the Atlantic
2. The Battle for Cable Supremacy
3. The Imagined Globe
4. Weltcommunication
5. The Professionalization of the Telegraph Engineer
6. Cable Diplomacy and Imperial Control
7. The Wiring of the World
Appendix: Actors of Globalization
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A valuable and illuminating analysis.

Connections

By reconstructing the social networks that linked nineteenth-century British, German, and American North Atlantic telegraph promoters, Wiring the World provides us with a wealth of intriguing and sometimes startling insights into the cultural significance of the Atlantic cable—one of the most iconic technological innovations of the age.

Richard R. John

Based on a clear knowledge of the state of the art, while adopting a solid methodology and robust concepts, Müller is able to provide a fresh history of the development of telegraph networks during the nineteenth century in a truly global perspective.

Pascal Griset

An excellent resource for communications history. Highly recommended.

CHOICE

The endnotes and bibliography make this book a valuable tool for scholars interested in further research on North Atlantic cable telegraphy. By introducing actor-network theory into the history of telecommunications, Müller has led the way to further advances in the field.

Daniel Headrickn Historical Review

Wiring the World contributes usefully to a growing literature on the telecommunications revolution of the 1830s on.

Journal of Modern History - Peter J. Hugill

Based on voluminous research, and written in a clear and accessible fashion, Wiring the World is a notable contribution to the history of globalization and technology.

Times Literary Supplement - Duncan Bell

Wiring the World is a story not only of technical and entrepreneurial achievement but of imperial rivalry, the rise of professions, complex cultural interactions, far-reaching social changes, and a remapping of the meaning of maritime space. Focusing on one of the major developments of the communications revolution—the linking together of much of the world with submarine cable lines in the era before World War I—Simone M. Müller's carefully crafted study contributes significantly to the history and theory of globalization.

Emily S. Rosenberg

The endnotes and bibliography make this book a valuable tool for scholars interested in further research on North Atlantic cable telegraphy. By introducing actor-network theory into the history of telecommunications, Müller has led the way to further advances in the field.

American Historical Review - Daniel Headrick