wired nation Sitting Bull and George Armstrong Custer, 1876 Little Big Horn, 1876

wired nation Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, 1876 A slowly deployed telecommunications technology 1877, Bell Telephone Company created Leases equipment to franchisees

wired nation The fate of new telecommunications technologies is written, in large part, by the older telecommunications technologies

wired nation The Western Union/Bell deal, 1880 Elisha Gray files patent office caveat noting his telephone discoveries on same day that Bell files patent Western Union hires Gray to create competing service Bell sues for patent infringement Settlement: Bell stays out of telegraph, pays Western Union 20 percent of its gross receipts Western Union mostly stays out of telephone Elisha “Bitter, moi?” Gray

wired nation Bell marketing strategy Target business customers Doctors, pharmacists, attorneys... Charge about 10% of a non-farm employees wages $40 to $60 USD a year in San Francisco for service New York / New Jersey served 7322 customers – only 1442 residential

wired nation Slow telephone growth in the late 19 th century 1880: 60,000 customers (1/1000 people) 1893: 260,000 customers (1/250 people)

wired nation Euro-telephone regulation Gave phone companies geographically limited franchise licenses limited development so not to compete with telegraph taxed profits heavily nationalized phone service in Britain and France

wired nation per capita use of telephone, 1895 United States: 1/208 Britain: 1/305 France: 1/216 Germany: 1/397

wired nation Rise of independent phone companies 1894: 285,000 phones, almost all Bell system 1904: 3.36 million phones, half of them linked to independent systems 1911: over 80 percent penetration of telephone use throughout the United States about 11 times the penetration of Europe