Technology and Government

Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications

Richard R. John, 2010

Much like Ted Steinberg’s Nature Incorporated, John’s main point in this book was that “The first electrical communications media—the telegraph and the telephone—were products not only of technological imperatives and economic incentives, but also of governmental institutions and civic ideals.” John pointed out at the outset that the telegraph was no “Victorian internet” and that even the much more popular telephone system was really only used by regular people for local calls until World War II. These tools were mostly used by elites and the businessmen who ran them had a very narrow vision of their potential market. John mentioned the concept of the “network effect” (that the value of a network expands with its user base) but suggested that historians might be wrong to project our understanding of it onto even the most forward-looking 19th century telegraph developers. John distinguished between the skills and temperaments of inventors and innovators, suggesting that like Samuel F.B. Morse himself, the people who patented the technology were often not the ideal developers of nationwide systems.

The issue of patents, actually, turns out to be a prime example of the intersection of technology, business, and government. Morse built his historic Washington-Baltimore demonstration line with a $30,000 grant from Congress. And from 1837 through the granting of the all-important patent in 1840 and its subsequent defense and promotion, the “assistance” that patent commissioner Henry L. Ellsworth gave Morse, his friend of over thirty years, was “little short of astounding.” Similarly, Postmaster General Amos Kendall actively promoted “the rapid diffusion of intelligence” through telegraphy and then went to work for Morse defending his patents. So the revolving door was operating in the first half of the nineteenth century! But the patenting of technical improvements was new and controversial. “Scientist Joseph Henry…refused as a matter of principle.” The creation of “intellectual property” in the 1830s might be an interesting topic to look into, at some point.

To some extent, the success of the post office in moving business letters much more quickly than had been possible in recent memory probably dampened the market for telegraphy. John said an upstate New York postmaster told the Postmaster General in 1841, “merchants were the only class of postal patrons who demanded high-speed communications; for everyone else, low cost was the key.” And since letters took only part of a day in upstate New York to get from town to town, and even postal communication with the City was possible in a day or two, the number of messages that needed to move faster than the mail must have been fairly small. I wonder, though, why sight drafts don’t seem to be part of the story at this point, when the movement of funds between Western Union stations later became such a big part of their business?

Hiram Sibley, the founder of Western Union, seems like an interesting character for further study.  A lot of interesting names appear in the telegraph story, including Ezra Cornell, Samuel Colt, Thurlow Weed, William Seward, Henry O’Reilly, and Francis O.J. Smith, who apparently “issued his euphoric congressional report on Morse’s invention” in 1838 in expectation of a share in the “still-to-be-issued telegraph patent.” Even Chief Justice Roger Taney makes an appearance, upholding Morse’s patent rights while setting limits on the patenting of underlying scientific principles. And Sibley’s multi-million dollar mistake, promoting a trans-Siberian connection to Europe, paved the way for the annexation of Alaska. Finally, John showed how personality can be a factor in history: “The fact that Mr. Jay Gould was the principal owner of the telegraph company [he took over Western Union in 1881] was another circumstance which led the people generally to side with the strikers,” according to an 1883 article in Banker’s Magazine. Gould’s takeover of Western Union was attacked by Henry Demarest Lloyd in the Chicago Tribune and even by the New York Chamber of Commerce, which called for congressional consideration of a postal alternative.

While there is no bibliography, the endnotes contained a lot of useful information and titles like Reid’s Telegraph in America and Plum’s Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the United States. There’s also a “Chronology of American Telecommunications”, covering the years 1792 to 1996.