Networks “Imagined Communities” –Postal –Newsprint –Transportation –Electronic Telegraphy Telephony

USPS – Public Ownership Postal Act of 1792 –Privacy and the Public Sphere –An extensible network –Newspaper subsidy – “Exchange System” Before the Civil War as much as 79% of the civilian federal work force was comprised of postmasters.

1831 “There is an astonishing circulation of letters and newspapers among these savage woods... I do not think that in the most enlightened rural districts of France there is intellectual movement either so rapid or on such a scale as in this wilderness.” –Alexis de Tocqueville

“The Telegraph” Separating Communication and Transportation Before electrical telegraphy? –Claude Chappe and optical telegraphy –American Telegraph (CT); Hillsboro Telegraph (NH); Lincoln Telegraph (ME); etc. Think of the word “computer” by comparison? And be careful with the “the”?

Electric Telegraphy Samuel F.B. Morse’s 1844 telegraph between Baltimore and Washington (“What hath God wrought?”) D.H. Craig and the Associated Press (1848) Chicago Board of Trade (1848) An integrated network: Transcontinental telegraph (1861); transcontinental railroad (1869)

7 mph! “Distance is reduced almost to contiguity; and the ink is scarcely dry,... Before we find in our hands, even at a distance of hundreds of miles, a transcript of our dearest friend’s minds” (1820) “Time and distance are annihilated” (1831) Resembling an “electric stream” (1843)

Market Efficiencies Local conditions, local prices Sacks versus silos “to arrive” contracts, the futures market “Men who don’t own something are selling that something to men who don’t really want it”

Standardization “rail-road time” 1883 Global time zones 1884 US Standard Time Act of 1918 StandardizationStandardization is a process not an effect.

“Acoustic telegraphy” Alexander Graham Bell, Antonio Meucci’s “talking telegraph,” and the practical common carrier... The Edison exampleAlexander Graham BellEdison

A History of Error? A “toy” because non-inscriptive For broadcasting For “messages,” not socializing Billing by flat rates rather than measured use No phone machines or competing equipment – AT&T monopoly

1891 Subscribers 973 physicians and hospitals 401 drug stores 363 liquor stores7322 commercial 315 livery stables1422 residential 162 metal working plants 146 lawyers 126 contractors

Thinking about networks How do networks become valuable? Where do network standards come from? How are networks (not) alike? Fiction as a source for media history? Telegraphs as the “Victorian internet”? How do new communication networks help to reshape experiences of public and private?