A SociAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN

TECHNOLOGY

Ruth Schwartz Cowan

Nt 111 York Oxfmrl OXIIOitl) UNlvnRSlTY PRESS

I 1N 7

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1'1101 pcrllll\\it)ll C)f o~ford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging in-Publication Data

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, 1941-A social history of American technology I Ruth S. Cowan.

p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-19-504606-4.- ISBN 0 -19-504605-6 (pbk. ) l. Technology-Social aspects-United States-History.

1. Title. Tl4.5.C69 19 96 303.48'3'0973~c20 96-5505 CIP

1 35798642

Printed en the United States of Amcrk~ on acid free Jmpcr

For Neil M. CoJvan

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I.N THE BEGINNING

IN 'II II ! /111111 >1 I OF TJ IE EI GHTEENTH CENTURY IN EUROPE, some taxon-llllli~lfl 1 he people who dassil)r and name the different species of animals ri11d pl.um had an argument. Having decided that human beings, men ""' \\oiiiCII, ought to be classified with the animals, they could not agree 1111 .1 11.um lr our species: Homo politictts, the primates who create gov-:ttllllt'lll\? 1/omo scxualis, the primates who are perpetually in heat? H omo ''' fllrlll , t hl primates who think? Or Homo faber, the primates who make 11ti111',S, l'vcntuaiJy they settled on thinking as the crucial characteristic that M:u. ltunt.lll beings apart from the orangutans and the chimpanzees, which

H~t~lll .lll.llumicaiJy to be our closest relatives. 'I lm hnok focuses on one of tl1e human characteristics that tile eigh-~~~ 1:111h nntury taxonomists rejected, making tllings. Our opposable tluu11h~, our hands, and tl1e things that we make and manipulate witll our lwuh .11c .\'much a part of our humanity as our brains and tile thoughts ''r h,t\l' h.1d, our governments and the constraints tlley have put on our lwh.l\ inr, l'\'Cn our sex hormones and the ways in which they have influ -nu nl nur live'>.

In l~t~olngy ha~ been a fact of human life as long as there have been hu-111.11\ """' From the time that human beings emerged as a separate species 1111 tlw. t',ll th , the; h:wc been trying 10 control, to manipulate, to exploit, .11ul \llllll tlllll'' cwn to ~ubduc 1 he c.lfl h wilh tools. Technological change Ju, Knll nd ", ,,,pldly in t hl 1 wc11t ic l h ~:cn tuty that we sometimes think nl m11.dvt~ ' "II\ 111 ~ 111 .1 dw.\tttr i .. tn .tlly tc\:hllnlol-\icl l age, surroumlcd a. \\1' .lit~ h' .ul tnlltnhtfl , .uHI \llpr dll~~h\\.IY' 'k~\l!.lptr, tmd pl.l~tlt\ A

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Which is why we should be suspicious whenever we see the labels "hand made" or "nattu-al" on a product, no matter what that product may hap pen to be, no matter how "old-fashioned" it may happen to look or feel or taste. All products are both handmade and natural because all human be ings are natllrally equipped to make things with their hands. Is a piece of cloth more handmade because it has been woven on a wooden loom rather than a metal one? Is bread that has been baked in a wood -fired brick oven more natural than bread baked in a metal oven fired by "natural" gas? And when we acwally do encounter something that is more handmade than something else (tor example, bread dough that has been kneaded by some one's hand rather than a machme), why do we assume instantly that the former is better tl1an tl1e latter? Swdymg the history of technology may help us to understand why so many people seem to believe that being hand-made and natural somehow means simultaneously both "better" and "tra-ditional."

A Social History of American Technology

( We use the word technolggy tQ denote those things that people have cre-ated so tl1at they can exploiLor manipulate the natural environment in which they are living. Technology is a more general word tl1an tool. Tools

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l are used to produce tl1ings, but botl1 the things that are produced (like bridges, houses, gears, woolen cloth, and clean laundry) and the things that are used to do the job (like wrenches, hammers, drill presses, looms, and washing machines) arc included in tl1e term technology. Domesticated an -imals and plants are technologies that people created in order to secure food supplies; medications arc technologies that people created in order to improve their health. Even languages and the tl1ings that contain languages (such as books, letters, computer software, and student essays) arc tech-nologies: tl1ey arc things that people have created so as to better control , nd manipulate tl1e social environment.

Technological systems are arrays of technologies. Onn pnmitive human beings had passed beyond the use of digging stkk~ th1) h .Hlji.I\M.'d out ul 11he realm of technology into the realm of t~dlllnlnp.ll .d .. , \I till\ A stn)!,lt tool, even the most primitive nftlwm1 i\ "'";'til) 11111 li ttlll tflll 111 .~lt th\:.

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A few yea rs l,llcr, (.;ugltclm(l M.m:otti , .1 vnung lt liccd ;t feature ol the apparatus that had apparently escaped Hertz's attention: Ucrtz h.1d sent an electric signal from one place (the transmitter) to another ( the me.1 suring device) without wires. l fit would work across the laboratory, would it work across a field? across a river? between mountaintops? Marconi b{ gan experimenting. O ver the next two years, he succeeded in sending me~ sages in Morse code (long sparks, short sparks) as far as two miles; he also developed a simple apparatus that would receive the waves (an antenna ) and convert them into direct current so that, like telegraph signals, they could be heard by someone listening to the pattern of the current through earphones.

Marconi was not the only person experimenting with "wireless telcgra phy" at tl1e time, but he was tl1e person who figured out a way to make money with it. First, he identified a Likely market for his invention: ship-to shore o r ship-to-ship communications, he reasoned , were markets that could not possibly be served by tl1e existing systems that depended on wires, the telegraph and the telephone. Marconi 's famer was a wealthy businessman and his mother was English; the family knew precisely what had to be done. In 1896, Marconi and his momer went to England to ob tain a patent o n the invention. Through his parents' social connections, Marconi was able to demonstrate his apparatus to officials of the British Navy and to raise tl1e money tl1at was needed to manufacture transmitters, antennae, and receivers. British Marconi was formed in 1897; a subsidiary, American Marconi, followed in 1899.

Wireless telegraphy was an instant success. The British Navy bought wireless equipment to communicate wim its imperial fleet, which plied every ocean of the world; tl1e British Army wanted Marconi's invention so that command posts could communicate with troops in tl1e field. The U nited States had recently acquired the Philippines, Cuba, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico; tl1e State Department wanted wireless systems to communi-cate witl1 its new overseas possessions, and the American Navy wanted to be able to stay in touch with its newly far-fl ung fleet . Dozens of companies whose busi ness depended on shipping were also interested. So were tl1e owners of newspapers, who realized (after some of Marconi's more spec-tacular publicity stunts) that repo rters could use wireless transmitters to communicate the news from distant places, places no t served by telegraph offices.

Within five years, Marconi had become a very rich man and wireless telegraphy had become a turn-of-the cenn1ry popular fad. Young people wim technical interests were fascinated . They were enthralled by their abil -ity to manipulate mysterious waves m at could be neither seen nor felt, yer the equipment needed was not very expensive and the techniques lor us ing (and repairing it) were fairly easy to learn . Amateur wircle.,., upctatol'\

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Fessenden's alternators had a greater range than Marconi 's spark SJP transmitters, making them suitable for very long distance point-to-point wireless telegraphic communications. The company built such a signalin~ station on the Atlantic shore, in Brant Rock, Massachusetts, hoping to con tract with merchant shipping companies and the Navy. On Christmas Eve: 1906, wireless operators on ships hundreds of miles out at sea were star tied to hear-instead of tl1e dots and dashes that they were accustomed to--tl1e voice of a woman singing, tl1en a violin being played, then passage~ being read from the Book of Luke. Using equipment that would omerwise be sending Morse code, Fessenden had succeeded in sending the fi rst "ra dio" messages.

Fessenden was unable, however, to interest very many people in his n~.:w system. His wireless telephonic signals were very weak, amplification was difficult to achieve, and accurate tuning to tl1e transmission frequencies was close to impossible. Point-to-point voice communication on land was han dled by the telephone system, and those who wanted ship-to-shore com-munications had already invested whatever capital they were going to in-vest in communication in wireless telegraphy, which was adequate for most commercial purposes. Altl1ough Fessenden continued to experiment witl1 voice transmission, much of his energy in tl1e next several years was devot-ed to perfecting his alternator and selling it to organizations that wanted telegraphy services; he was also embroiled in a patent dispute witl1 Lee De-Forest.

DeForest was, like Fessenden, a minister's son. He had been born in Iowa, raised in Georgia, and educated at Yale, where he had earned a doc-torate in physics in 1899-tlle same year in which Marconi had broached tile American market. DeForest had written his dissertation on features of high-frequency alternating currents. Chronically short of cash, he had tak-en a series of unsatisfactory jobs after completing his degree, but he had also been bitten by tl1e wireless bug and had started experimenting witll improvements on receivers. Sometime in 1901, he made patent applica-tions for a detecting device he called a responder; with this invention and a small amount of capital contributed by friends, he attempted to go into business-just as Fessenden had done-in competition wim Marconi. The responder djdn 't work very well , but in his effort to garner p ublicity for his new company, DeForest caught me attention of a stock promoter by tl1e name of Abraham White. Before long, White had created a new company, DeForest Wireless Telegraphy, and had brought it public with a $1 million stock otlering; by 1904, the capitalization had leaped to $ 15 million rc

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While Dcfore~t was ncglctting hb audion, 110meonc else w.ls cxpcn menting with it. As :1 child , Edwin H . Armstrong had been a devoted am ateur wireless operator; as a student in the engineering college ofColumb1.1 University, he decided to experiment with DeForest's remarkable amplifi er for his senior thesis. Neither Fleming nor DeForest had been able to c\ plain why the diodes and triodes worked the way they did, but Armstront\ thought that the then new theory of electric currents-that they invohcd the flow of negatively charged subatomic particles called electrons-might be applicable. During 1912, in the course of his experiments, Armstron~ discovered something remarkable: if the current coming off the plate of an audion was fed back into the grid of the tube-nearing what was later called a feedback, or regenerative, circuit-sow1ds could be even further amplified, making it possible to dispense with earphones.

A few months later, still experimenting, Armstrong went one, very cru cia! step further; he discovered that, under certain circumstances, regencr ative circuits could transform vacuum rubes into transmitters of electro magnetic waves. This was even more startling. During the first decade of wireless telegraphy, spark-gap transmitters and alternators had been get ting larger and larger in order to meet the commercial demand that elec tronic messages be able to travel farther and farther. The state of the an was the Alexanderson alternator, named for the engineer who had designed and built it for the General Electric Company: a huge disc that tw-ned 20,000 times every minute (its outer rim reaching speeds of700 miles per hour) when supplied with 200 kilowatts of energy. Working away in his lab oratory at Columbia in the winter of19 13, Armstrong had discovered that a handful of specially adapted light bulbs could do the same job as the room-sized alternator.

Armstrong grad uated from Columbia in June 1913. In the fall, he ap plied for a patent on his regenerative amplifying circuit; in the winter, for one on his transmitting circuit. Because he had failed to interest either AT&T or the Marconi companies in his patents, Armstrong sold the rights to his regenerative circuit, for the then-munificent sum of$100 a month, to the Telefunken Company of Germany. In the fal l ofl914, World War l had started. The British had cut the telegraph cables that linked Germany with the United States; wireless was going to have to be used instead. Tete funken needed the best amplifiers it could find.

World War I raged for two and a half years (between August 1914 and April 1917) before the United States entered it on the side of the Allies. During those two and a half years, it became clear to virtually everyone in valved in the communications industry that after the war wireless telcpho ny based on vacuum tube technology was going to become both feasible and profitable. A mass m:trket for radio receivers, simple and durable in strumenrs that people could use in their home~, was likely tu dc\(:lnp. But

* h' ' \\ tllild 1'\ .1p till~ f'li ,o l it~ irtilll llti!l I'"IIJIIIi,d 111.11krt \\o11tld II hl llrtll'h Alld .\lltl'm,tll t-.1,11,111ri \\lrr :Wtu~d 1h1 1''11 "' ' o11 l'lcnllllj;'., drodc, but .-hnw pruhrp.ll hm1111 ,., wudr:ss t~lq~r.tph) , would be dimini~hcd if radio bt' .tm t: popul.\r? ( )r \I ~' 1', ''It"'"' nt:d the p.ttcnt1> on DeForest's audion, '"" ''hose principal htt\1111.'~'' tdcphonc :.crvice, might also be diminished? 1'klore'>t, who had ~old the patent rights to his audion, but who was legal-It l'll tllled to manufacrure it? Telefun.ken, who owned the rights to there-

a~unative circuit on which radio amplification would be based? Arm-tl fllllt!. , who owned the patent on the transmitting ci rcuit, but who would

~ .thlc to exploit it only if Telefunken chose not to interfere? l'or the duration of the war, none of these questions could be answered.

Nuucthelcss, in anticipation of the war's end and in an effort to control the 1\'llltu marketplace-which had not at that point been either clearly defined

r mc.1sured-all the potential recipients of the postwar radio profits had fUn I patent suits against each other. In April 1917, when the United States dcd.trcd war on Germany and Austria, neither the outcome of the war nor tlw outcome of those suits could have been easily predicted.

Government Regulation of Wireless Communication In April1912, a luxury ocean liner, the TitMtic, making its maiden voyage, hn .111 iceberg in the north Atlantic and sank. The wireless operator on the 'litmtic sent out wireless distress signals, which were picked up by anotl1-cr ~hip, twenty-five miles away, and this ship changed course in an effort to rescue passengers. (In part because several other nearby ships had closed ,luwn their wireless receivers for tl1e night, about half tl1e passengers drowned .) The news of the Titanic disaster reached American newspapers lw wireless telegraphy (having been transmitted to New York by a Marconi tll.ation in Newfoundland ), and anxious relatives of the passengers began trying to radio tl1c rescue vessel to get a list of survivors, using any trans-nutter, amateur or commercial, that they could locate. Ship-to-shore com-lllllnications became chaotic; every passing hour brought more false good mws, false bad news, and totally incomprehensible news. Within days, journalists began demanding government regulation of wireless commu-llllJtion; within a week, Congress began taking testimony.

l'he Radio Licensing Act of 1912 was intended to cope with what then !lt'''nled to be a pressing problem: the frequency spectrum was becoming dunered witl1 electromagnetic signals, some of which were interfering witl1 r.t\.h other, some of which were so close together that receivers could not lw properly tuned. Thousands of amateur operators, hundreds of com-llll.'l cia I system~, and de liens of governmental, educational, and military \l.lltOil!. were all \Cilll illp 1\l~'"'V.C'> . The American Navy in pruticular was hl'llll1ling increa\111~~1) dtJ'\ 11drt11 1111 winlcss telegraphy and increasingly ,oulctncd aboul lllll:tn:rJIIIl '''"' .11 111 inr~ rnption ofit'> messages; in one '"t , pcrh .lp~> 'l''"~ ' ~ plt ;,l , .1111.111 111~ "'" :;,11d to h.wc sent 1:1k.c order

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A tew weeks after the Treaty ofVersailles was signed, hearings were hd.l in Congress on a bill sponsored by the Navy Department that wouh.J lb''' the federal government a monopoly over radio transmission. Proponc111 argued that the successes of the war years would not have been possibk tl the government had not brought order to what had previously been a com petitive free-for-aiL Opponents were convinced, as one congressman pill it, that "[h]aving just won a fight against autocracy, we would start an ~It tocratic movement with this bill." 1 All over Europe, governments were L.tk ing precisely such autocratic control over the airwaves, but in the Unit~:d States, the bill was tabled. The Navy Department was not, however, ca\11) deflected; if it could not have its own monopoly, it could at least try 111 guarantee that American radio transmission and manufacturing capabilittc would be who lly controlled by Americans.

Something had to be done with the vast Marconi facilities for transmit ting and receiving that had been commandeered by the govenunent dur ing the war. Would they be returned to American Marconi, a subsidiary of a British company? Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Commandet S. C. Hooper, the Navy officer in charge of radio operations, and Owc.:n D. Young, president of General Electric, quickly came up with a different plan: a new company would be chartered, which could only have United States citizens as its directors and officers; only 20 percent of its stock would belong to foreigners. A representative of the government would sit on the board of directors. American M.trconi would transfer all of its asset~ to this new company. Individual investors in American Marconi would re ceive shares of the new company's stock. General Electric would purcha~c the shares owned by British Marconi.

The officers of American Marconi had been made an offer they couldn' t refi.tse. In February 1919, with the tacit approval of the president of the United States, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was born-hold ing almost complete control of all international and ship-to-shore wireless telegraphic facil ities in the United States.

But that was not all. Within months, RCA had entered into cross licensing agreements (in exchange for shares of its stock) with almost all the large companies that held crucial patents for wireless telegraphy and telephony. DeForest and Armstrong would be, henceforth, very rich men, and although their personal enmity led each to sue the other multiple times (two of their suits were carried as tar as the Supreme Court), none of their suits interfered \\ith the manufacture of the components and circuits that they had patented. Telefunken's American patent portfolio had been sci ted

IW 1111 .\ltut l't11)1lfl\ t ll'lniLIIt ill Jl)l ~ ltfll \11\l~~qlltllth 'nld 111 \;tllll "llllnltt~ lot ~1 ,1-100 \\ltl\ltttu;:uttllt.ll 11 hn.\11\( p.ttl olthcpoltloltollhl\ tU :\ lOIIId l\ll ltml 1 .nh p.11l\ tnthr l{t .t\ .l~tcem~.:nt ,\greed to rc~pcct tlu ulltl'l I'" tic'>' tkt'tnnl 'l'lwn 'i ul t11lh1~:tllC: RCA woultlnot compete \\ uh i\T&T on long, t h \ t.lllt.l tdcphuny; AT&T would not step on RCA's tttt' "it h rcg:.lrd to inlcrl\..11 ion.\ I wireless transmission; Western Electric (a "'"'tdi.~ry of AT&T) and

1\llllld Itt IIIII' 111111hn < lllo , llll' l'fl ljlll~lll1111 1\l11ittcr at corporate headquarters that could be finished in time lU broadcast election results on November 2 . The deparnncnt store ad,cr ''"ctnent had given Davis an idea: if there were voice transmissions that ,.,,.,youe might be interested in receiving, d1en the potential market for re (c:ivcrs d1at Westinghouse could manufacture under the Armstrong patents would be not just amateur operators but, potentially, every American . If it (ould conquer that mass market, Westinghouse's star might just eclipse RCA's. Construction began on a shack and a 100-watt transmitter on the roof nf one of Westinghouse's factory buildings in East Pittsburgh. An applica-tion was filed with the U.S. Department of Commerce (as required by d1c R.ldio Act of 1912), and on October 27, the call letters KDKA were as "'~ned. A local newspaper agreed to relay election returns from its teletype n1.Khine to the shack by telephone. On November 2, Warren G . Harding's defeat ofJames M . Cox became the very first radio newsflash, and radio broadcasting was born-wid1 the Westinghouse Corporation as its mid

wtfc. The idea was contagious. Within weeks after the election, Westinghouse huilt another transmitter atop its plant in Newark, New Jersey, and began broadcasting play-by-play descriptions of baseball games. A few months later, Westinghouse was also broadcasting in Chicago. In od1cr cities, am ,\leurs began building transmitting stations for local businesses: depart m..:nt stores were building stations because the performers who came w broadcast attracted crowds; newspapers were building stations because pnnting the news and entertainment schedule helped to sell more news p.1pers; colleges and universities were building stations to provide home b.1sed education; some entrepreneurs were building stations so as to broad l.l'>l information about their products between concerts and lectures.

ln the first half of 1921, the Deparnnent of Commerce issued five new licenses for radio transmission; in d1e second half, rwenty-three; by Febru .uy 1922, it was issuing twenty-four licenses a month; by Juty, that figure lud trebled. Al1d atl over the country, amateurs were buying parts for ra lh receivers and putting them together for sale to friends and family; some n it hose amateurs were even going into d1e business of assembling and sell in~ radios to the public. Sales of radio sets and parts for radio sets mush j "'>n>

The men in this picture were members of the firM generation of broadcast radio engineers. They are preparing the equipment to broadcast a public evenr, possiblr the Dempsey-Carpenticr prize fight ( l 921 ), which was received by over 300,000 people, the largest radio audience up ro that time and a landmark in the popular acceptance of radio broadcasting. ( Courresy Da,id Sarnoff Research Center.)

Mter framic negotiations, Westinghouse was brought into the RCA con-sortium in the spring of 1921; in exchange for 20 percent of the stock in RCA, Westinghouse agreed to put its patents- most especially the Arm-strong superheterodyne patent- into the common pool. But even that move did not stop the proliferation across the country of new transmitting stations and new radio manuf.1cturers; the country's appetite for radio seemed, at least for the moment, insatiable. Under the RCA agreements, the sole manufactun~r of transmission equipment was supposed to be West-ern Electric, a subsidiary of AT&T, but the amateurs who were building stations all across the country did not know that- had they known it, they probably would not have cared. Controlling the radio market- now tl1at broadcasting had become considerably more popular t11an point-to-point communications-was going to be a good deal more difficult d1an tl1e founders of RCA had predicted just tlu-ee years earlier.

As the cost of broadcasting began to escalate, the parties to the RCA agreements began to step on each other's toes. In the first , halcyon years of radio, performers had tlocked to radio studios; for singer~ and pianists and opera stars and politicians, the free publicity was sutlicient inducement .

1\111 .t(l\1 .1 "tll~n h.td hr~ 11 .1~l.1 d tot tlllttp 1111 n1 1\H lilY hnuP. nl .Itt lttm ho lltt Vht '>l.\1 t 10 kc:lth.u '>lit '' h htlll~~ l\plou~:d . /\Iter hc.lllng on~: of

!I' nmd., pi.I)'Cd two thoull:~nd lillie' .tnd rc:1li.ting tl1at its retail market \\," bnng undercut-a record company might begin to press for royalties. C 'ttllpo,~.:rs and lyricists began to think that tl1ey, too, were entided to some I'" tilt' Ill when their works were performed repeatedly. And when volun -ft' o' l l.tbor would no longer suffice, station managers began to have to pay

.1l.111c~ 10 the people who read the news and the weather or reported on l."t' b,tll games.

Who was going to pay all d1ese expenses? Westinghouse had originally ,1\\tt tncd that it would underwrite the expenses ofKDKA and its other sta-111111'> in order to induce householders to buy its radio sets, but that as-tllnption began to look worrisome as tl1e costs of broadcasting began to

lllu'casc. At RCA, Sarnoff proposed that perhaps it would be a good idea 111 .Hid a small "ta.x" to the price of every vacuum tube, putting the mon-,., that RCA would collect into a pool from which stations coLLid pay per-lurrncrs. But early in 1922, someone at AT&T came up witl1 a different ldta, which would develop into what we have come to understand as com-lltt'l'cial broadcasting: why not sell airtime:? Why not create, by analogy with 1 he telephones, tolls for broadcasting?

In early August 1922, AT&T's station, WEAF, began broadcasting from .uop one of its buildings in New York City. On August 28 at 5 P.J\1., it hroadcast its first income-producing program-a ten-minute "message" dtscribing tl1e advantages of cooperative apartments tor sale in Queens-.utd the radio commercial was born, with the phone company as its mid-wtfe. By 1924, WEAF was starting to become profitable, and AT&T be-~an to think about creating other toll stations in od1er cities, linking them 1oged1er with its phone lines, thereby creating an opportunity to sell air-l nne, not in just o ne locale, but all over tile coun try.

When the officers of AT&T began toting up the potential profits from '>liCh a network, they also began to wonder why they were letting other sta-tions use their phone lines for long-distance transmission of signals (for ex-.unplc, when a radio station broadcast a speech at a political convention, it was using phone lines to transmit d1e speech to its studio; live performances of operas or play-by-play descriptions of sporting events ''ere all being transmitted the same way). Why should it make its faci lities available to its competitors? AT&T wondered. And since some of its competitors were its p.lrtners in the RCA agreements, why should it remain a party to tlwse ,,greements? And ifit ceased to be a member of the RCA consortium, then wuldn ' t its sub\idi,\ry, Western Electric, begin competing in t11e lucrative market for the m.ltlttl;\~turc ol'hnusehold radios?

At the very 'l;lntc 111111 1 lt .t t \'I'& I' was beginning to renegotiate it!. :l{!.l'cc mcnts, the Pcdn .d I ""lr:: Cotllllttt ,\ttlt1, '' hich had received several t:om pl.lints fi-nn1 ~111.111 1 .to lu.' llltllid[l.; t "" '' hq.1,.1n an anlllrU\l inve~tig.ltlott nl llltlll' 11\l' IHi w l :. ,,j'tl11 , '0(t~ .. niuil1 , H,.(!J\ , j11'1 fr,m yt:.11'\ .tficr it\ fitulldin~. w,,, und~t ,,,.v,, tl '"ll wn tudn; 1111~' . r ''"~ t 'ttl i.l p.~rtmr,, AT&T, '""ll

nltn pull ottl .tnd flu ~11\t' llllltl' lll . 11ltidt h.ultniti.tlh \ltho111nl llw ,-!l .111011 of R< .A,nuw 11111kr .1 drllnl' tll .tdfllllll\l l .llllllt .111d lw dtlktt 111 1c. i sons wanted w bn:.1k 11 up.

Young and SarnotT were, however, brilliant ncgoti.IIOI\. l'h r here are many surprises for individuals and organizations that think tlll'y t.tn remain in control of the business of communications. ] ust when en inn:ntor, after years of painstaking work, would begin to count his roy-ahin in the millions of do !Jars, along came anomer inventor with a patent f)ll ,I fleW, slightly better device, Stealing his munder and his plans for fu-tUfl' wca.Jm. Or just when a company, after years of complex maneuvering, wuuld begin to exert almost complete control over some marketplace, ah lilA carne another company with a new idea to compete for market share. Control of electronic industries-by individuals, by companies, even by

~II\ crnments- has been from tl1e very beginning evanescent, transitory, tllcring. Individuals and companies have had tl1eir moment in the stm, but C'\'l'lllllally mey ha\e all lost monopolistic control of the market mat had umc proven so profitable.

In the early day of broadcast radio, many people tl1ought mat it would he: the ultimate mode of human communication and that it would revolu-tionize relations between individuals and between nations. "Messenger of

~ympathy and love .. . consoler of tl1e lonely . _ . promoter of mutual ac-lJII.lintance, of peace and good will among men and nations," one radio engineer wrote; " . . . tl1e whisper that leaps tl1e hemisphere . - . me wis-dom of the ages revived in a single breath," remarked another."5 Yet even

.t~ they wrote, several ingenious men were already attempting to create a mmmunications medium tl1at mey knew would be, to put me matter un-p.rammaticalJy, even more ultimate.

Visible light is composed of electromagnetic waves that arc shorter in kngth and higher in frequency than radio waves or electric current. By I '.>20, electrical experts in several countries were experimenting wim vari-ous ways to translate images into electromagnetic signals that could be car-ned through wires or projected into the atmosphere . One of mese exper-uncnters was Ernst Alexanderson, the engineer who had designed and built rhc mammotl1 alternators for General Electric. Alexanderson's experimen-t.tl device was a revolving disk punched wim a spiral pattern of small holes, lhrough which a light beam was directed; he hoped mat this device would he able to digitize images (turn them into a pattern of tiny dark and light \pOts) SO mat mey could be translated into electric signals by a anomer dc\icc called a photoelectric cell. Another experimenter, who worked ftlr General Electric's chief competitor, Westinghouse, was Vladymir /.worykin, who, as a tormer Russian Army officer, had specialized in wire-ks~ tclcg.raphy. [n l9 20, Westinghouse gave Zworykin permission to be-

)!,Ill dl\l'lctping,lll .lll 1 ln tron l, 'lllllll'l llli ldr.l Jut o 111h .1 '~ IIIIIC'I lt,ul .tbo Ol'( lfl r'ld 10 l' lulo I 1,11 ll~>Wtll l h, ,1 dl'\ otnl t .tdio .lfllol tnu \\ hn, \\ III Io he was still a h i~h .,dwol ~tudcn r II\ ld.tltu In the i!a tly I tJ)(h, had h1 !{II II to experi ment with cathode ray tubes. U ntil thnot revolutionary; the injtial ~.1hk 'yst cm~ (one WJ., .tlr l',Hiy in pl.1cc in 1949) used wires (botmd to-jll' thl'l rnt cables, hence the name) to tr:msrnit television signals into d1e hnt lll'~ that, for one reason o r another (intervening mountains or very tall

lulldin~s or very great distances), could not receive broadcast signals clear-l\' Broadcast programs ""ere received at the studios of the cable company 1 \IIIIIC:limcs over telepho ne lines, sometim es through antennae) and were 1hn1 rc:translated into signals that went out along the cables to subscribers. t )ti (C a sufficient number of customers had become reguJar subscribers, the lolhk companies invested funds in producing some of ilieir own local pro-w.uns io their own local studios, but in general most of the material d1at ,,11111: over the cables in the early years was produced by one of the televi-' 'nn networks.

In 1965, however, the first communications satellite was put in orbit (see t h.1ptcr ll ), and iliat changed bod1 the technology and d1e potential of l.thk television. Communications satellites contain electronic devices r l.tllcd transponders) d1at amplifY and transmit electromagnetic signals. 1\c:(ause the satellites are located high above the earth's surface and because their o rbits are synchronous with the eard1's rotation, communications ,,l tcllites can receive and transmit signals from and to virtually anyplace on the surface of the globe: connecting a production studio in Texas, let us ,,1y, \vith a receiving antenna in Cairo, or vice versa. The first several satel-lites were consnucted and rocketed into orbit by lntelstat (the lnterna-ttonal Space Communications Consortium); 60 percent ofd1c shares in In-tdstat belonged to COMSAT, an American corporation which-like RCA-had been created by Congress as a profit-making, investor-owned business, belonging equally to four American corporations (AT&T, ITI, RCA, and Western Unjon).

Communications satellites made it possible for cable companies to stop p.1ying AT&T for the use of its phone lines, and it also made it possible for 'orne of the cable companies to begin thinking of creating national, even mternational, networks, beaming programs from one location to receiving .tntennae all over d1e cow1try, if not all over d1e world. Satelli tes couJd t mnsmit signals from dozens, even hundreds, of cable channels: cable com-p:mies were not limited to the twelve very high frequency (VHF) or the seventy ulna high frequency (UHF) channels d1at the FCC had assigned 10 television because, unlike broadcast transmissions, cable-satelli te trans-missions from the earth were directed upward, rather than outward, less-ening the likelihood of interference. By radically cutting the cost of trans-mission, satellites made special interest channels economically feasib le, rhnnncls that would caHy programs that appealed to only a ~>cgment the n.nion 's aud icnn:: c .1 rt oon chan nels for children; i nstructiona I chilllncltt fr 'l hools: rcligiou" l h lll lll ' l ' {clr fundamcntalisll.; movie, lllll'>il:, .111d ~thnp

Jllll~ ~h.1111ll'l~; t:H:u, by 11.>7V, ;I dw111d th.p \loulld btll.l\k,l\1 nnlltiug lhl! ~:ongrc~\lllllJI 'l'"ium .111d hl'.it ill~'' .\, ,, 1 null ~ .1bk tdn ''"'" 1 '' ,, i . ...-d a powerful, dc~:cnttJ.Iilln~ fm~:l, lrc;llillfl, Ill'\\ llll,lfl\ h) "ht~h 1111kl'' f1 dent pointS of view could be heard.

Federal regulations, created in the era of r.1dio .\no rdcvt~ton nlt '' '' ~ broadcasting, at first stood in the way of the e-xpansion of lJblc pm!-'' 1111 ming, but a series of executive and judicial rulings (beginning with 1,, \i dent Nixon's decision in 1972 that organizations other than COM SA I t)lli.l lntelsat could orbit satellites) gradually lifted these restrictions. ln 1 1>7;, there were just 100 cable receiving stations; two )'Cars later then; \HI{ 1,500; in 1961 one million households had cable service; in 1990 the; ltv,. ure had reached 55 million- and the social control that the net\vork~ .u~d their advertisers had once exercised over the content of broadcast~ h.u i ended.

Electronic Components: The Vacuum Tube and the Transistor

As it was with modes of communication, so it was with the components ul electronic circuits. As a technological system, the vacuum tube had a f.Ht ly long life-it was a critical component of virtually all electronic circuit between 1915 and 1950-but RCA did not manage to control it for vcq long, partly because the Deforest and Armstrong patents expired and part ly because the threat of antitrust action led the company to license com pctitors. In any event, tl1e vacuum tube was eventually replaced, first by th' transistor and subsequently by tl1e integrated circuit.

The transistor, invented in 1947 by a team of physicistS (William Shock ley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain ) working at Bell Laboratories (the research arm of AT&T), was a solid-state substitute for a vacuum tube. In stead of an evacuated glass chamber, it used a semiconductor crystal (semt conductors, like germanium and silicon, arc fairly good, but not excellent, conductors of electrical currents). When wires are embedded in semi con ductor crystals, the significant atomic changes occurred at tl1e junctiom, or transitions, between tl1e wires and the crystaJ (in later versions of the transistor, which have different semiconductor crystaJs sandwiched to gether, the changes occur at the surfaces of the layers), hence the name transistor.

Considerably smaller than the vacuum tube, transistors did not need to be heated up (which meant that they began working as soon as current w.ts applied to them), required much less power to operate, and were much more reliable (since they were unlikely to burn out, the way vacuum tube\ regularly did ). Transistors thus made miniaturization and battery operation of many electronic devices possible. For this reason, they were used ext en sively in airborne cold war weaponry and '>pace e'\ploration equipment tl1roughout the 1950s. Late in the Jccadc (when m,l\\ pruduLrron tedl niques had brougl,r down their prilc), tr;Hl~J\Ior' ,,J,o b,~"' lo .lppr.lt' in

COII~IIIIIl'l d~lllllllli.'l in 1\lllko~1 td 'i,iolll M'h1 l~~: .lllllf!. ,lid\ , ,llld l'.lkul.l tur' Nnnc:thdl'' .1 ltttl1 ""'"' 1h.111 .1 d~,,Hk .1hcr the tr.\n\t!>tut went into 1\111 ,,,,lc; produutnnll, 1on, w." H'J'I''-ed, thts time by a device that was at pau .111d the same time pulc:llttJIIy much more flexible and much more rnwnful the integrated CirCUit.

An integrated circuit replaced the various components out of which elec-tl'lmic circuits were composed with lines of chemicals that were laid down em. ctLhed into, or photographically reproduced onto sheets of various Ktninmductor materials. These sheetS could then be laminated onto each uthcr, forming even more complex circuits out of the three dimensions of Clllt' thick block: an electronic chip. Slightly different forms of the inte-tvatcd circuit were patented ill 1957 by two engineers, Jack Kilby and Rubert Noyce. Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattairl, the inventors of the tran-alswr, had worked for Bell Labs, one of tl1e world's premier industrial re-aurch laboratories, a subsidiary of one of tl1e world's largest corporations. Kilby, by way of contrast, was an engineer employed by Texas Instruments, then a moderately sized company; Noyce, also an engineer, was one of the fcntndcrs of Fairchild Semiconductor, a start-up firm that had just recent-ly begun to develop and manufacmre new kinds of transistors.

Bell Labs had been willing to license the transistor to anyone who want-ed to manufacture it, but the royalties, which were substantial, quickly evaporated once integrated circujtS began to appear on the market. The in-lq?,rated circuit was not only smaller than the transistor (one chip the size ,,r a transistor could hold three, five, even a dozen transistor equivalents,

~as well as other electronic components and all the connecting wires), it was Jlso potentially more efficient (because many different kinds of circuits per-lclrming several different electronic tasks could be built onto the same chip). Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor were also willing to lit:ense the integrated circuit ill return for a royalty, and witlun a very short time, other illventors and otl1er companies had patented and were mar-keting new variations on tl1e original idea: for example, a memory chip, which contained special kinds of circuitS that could store electronic infor-nl.ltion; a logic chip, which contained circuits that could manipulate that

~torcd information in certain defined ways; or a microprocessor chip, which was programmable so that it could manipulate stored electronic informa-tiOn in " variety of ways.

Thus the history of electronic components mimics the history of elec-tronic communications: when new industrial and technical frontiers arc upened, older companies suddenly discover that they cannot control areas they had once expected to dominate. Indeed, in the field of integrated cir-llliLS, neither the original inventors nor the original compatlics nor even the country in which the original innovations had been made succeeded in dominating fnr 'C.: I')' I on~ . Bmh Texas J nstruments and Fairchild Semi-' onductor flottll'>hr 1. '"' ll1111 h tnvcntors were well rewarded for their cre-.\11\ll\, hutWilll'l:dlku, i11 tl~~:u lll.ul.,tpiJcc quickly became very intcn~c, hn1h wuh rt',''" I{ inoto.\"itthr dtip' .111d "llh rq.;lnltO inlwv.ltin llll'lh

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rc:.c .uu l mathematic:., and .ln uf'f t1.1.11 tiwn 1 ht: Btlll\h mlltt.ll y UIIJl\ tlt.u h.11l hn11 responsible for the machine th.n h.uJ broken, .utd 11mn.unhkd 1111.: rd the high prices of the first models of each new generation of comput-ns, and the customer most eager to have the new capabilities of each of 1 hose generations. Much of the tax money spent on computer development .111d purchase was spent by military and quasi-military agencies (the armed

~crvices, the Atomic Energy Commission , or NASA), but some of it was 'pent by civilian agencies, such as tl1e Census Bureau.

r n part because so many young people received training in computer de-"gn under various governmental contracts, the pace of innovation in com-puters was probably faster than in any other previous technological do-main . Each generation of computers was better-faster, more powerful , more flexible, and lesl> expensive-than the generation tl1at came before, .md generations were nwnu red in years, not decades. For inputting data, pum;hc.:ards wert n ph1ctl by tn.lgneric tape, then botl1 intermediate me-dl,l he~:JmC ou111111ikil "hn1 d.11 .1 rould be entered direct!)' Prngramming hv plll lf, pulh111' '' ,,,. ' i' J l. i'r.d hy pmr.1 .111lming lw binary imlllllllon, 1 hen

pmf~l .ll\1111111~' h)' lui!}' !11~\111~11n11 " '' npl.!ll'd h) p1ngr.lllllllllll' hv (lllll

flllll;l 1.11\~~~~.l~l'\, thnl l'llll)l'illllllllllf. hy I lllllllllh I llllf,ll.l.t< \ 1\.1\ ll'fllll' i'.f in m.my lll~l.tmlc, IH pH Pll k.IW d jllll~l.llllllllll~ 11111!!,1\lm 1 h.ll unild 111.1 nipula1c numbers \\Cil' 'llppkn\l'lll l'd by plllf,l.\111\ 1h.11 tuuld lll.ll11pul,tti} words or play games or make judg,ml'ntc, or dr,l\1 u I IIlli pr~;1 htllihtll 'Pn Ia patterns. Machine memories bccllmc ever t.ugcr; m.H:hinc: '>Pl'l.'d~ hn.llw ever faster-while the machines thcmselvcl>, thanks to trllnsi,tor~ and Ill 111 regrated circuitry, became ever smaller and less expensive. Each of 1 hn innovations, and each of those generations, brought new, compctilivc l'r porate players into the computer marketplace. Every year, new companu were being formed; every year, some of those companies would start dm1 11 the road ro dominance; some would reach the goal, but most only m.111 aged ro stay on top for very short periods of rime. Even the giant even111 ally nun bled: lBM, which had dominated the mainframe computer busim-.~ for close to a decade, feU on its face in d1e 1980s, when personaJ comp111 ing became the industry frontier. In 1992, the company-whose stock h.td been considered the safest possible investment for the previous fifty year,, the bluest of all the bluechips-losr money for the first time since the end ofWorld War 11 . The computer marketplace, like the communications and component marketplaces, turned out, despite many strenuous efforts, tc1 be lll1COnUolJable.

Conclusion: The U ltimate Failure of Efforts to Control Electronic Commwlication

From the invention of wireless telegraphy in the late nineteend1 century w d1e creation of an electronic superhighway in the late twentieth , no one in dividual , and no one institution, has succeeded in controlling for very lon14 the American market for electronic components or electronic devices nr even the content of what is communicated by those devices. The history of electronics suggests that there have been, roughly speaking, three rea sons for this. First, throughout the twentieth century, there have been many dc\'Oted electronics amateurs- ham operators in years past, hacker~ more recently- young people drawn by d1e mystery and magic of com municating over long distances, of calculating faster than the eye can blink, of imitating d1e functions of d1e human brain. Because there have been many amateurs, there have also been, regularly, a fair number of brilliant innovators: Armstrong got his start in amateur radio, so did Conrad; years later, the men who built d1c company that first succeeded in markeri11g a personaJ computer mer each od1er at meetings of somedting called the Homebrew Computer Club.

The federal government has also played a multifaceted role in the de centralization of electronic technology and electronic communication. Sometimes, as when the Navy Department wished lO crealc RCA as a vir tuaJ monopoly, there have been coumcrvening tcndcncic!), but un the whole, the government, '"her her through antitrust proceeding,:. or the reg, ulations or the Fedcr.tl Communication' Commis,ion or 1h1.. p,!'an linA ol

111tltt.Hy pn '' liH 1m 111 ''''"'11111 1 h.l 'l , ,~ 1 ~d 1 ,-, ,,-,: ,,~-;,.,, t hl h.md ol 1 how wl1o h.nr \\,IIHI:d to tlllll111p11lflt tin 1111 .lt.l ,

I'Jn.1lly, the I..Oiilpclll h" pn~.tbllil ''' ut' ,, rc.:I .Hivdy ficc market economy h.t\l" also played a role . I tom thr llHHllc.:tll "' 1899 when Guglielmo Mar-l"'" lirsl made his spcet.Kul.u publluty debut on American shores, clever nu:n and women have undc~tuod that elccuonic circuits could be a route 111 nchcs, in fact, a fast route to riches. Even when one person or one com p.111y has managed somehow to build a gate arOLmd those riches, od1er peo pic and companies have been willing to try just about anything to knock th.n gate down-and a fair number have succeeded.

As a consequence of these three factors, the pace of change in electron-In has been fairly rapid, and no single individuaJ , company, component, or mldium has managed to dominate for very long.ln the world of electronic media, centralization of power-and all the negative consequences that can ti1llow from it-has aJways been a possibility, and many people-from pres-idents of multibillion dollar corporations to high school graduates fiddling with diaJs and S\\~tches in d1eir garages-have tried to accomplish it. Noned1eless, no individual, no matter how creative or how powerful , has Ml tar succeeded for very long; neither has any company, no matter how well capitalized, no matter how well supplied with highly trained and high-ly paid lav.ryers, no matter how many strings it was able to pull, no matter how many very high places to which those strings were connected. Pardy because of d1e nature of the American economy, and partly because of the natu.re of electronic technology itself, the rwenried1-cenntry electronic me-dia seem to have outwitted the critics who believed that d1ose media had tnescapably totalitarian tendencies.

Notes

1. Remarks by Congressman William S. Greene, Govermnmt Control of Ra dw Conmumication: Hutri11gs before the Committee 011 Merchtmt Mari11e and Fish oics (1918), as quoted in Erik Barnouw, A 1o1ve1 in Babel: A H istor_y of Broad ctuting in the United States (Ncw York: Oxford Uni\'ersity Press, 1966), p. 55.

2. John Tebbe!, David Sanwff Putting Electrouics to Work (Chicago: Ency-dopcdia Britannica Press, 1963), pp. 99- 106.

3. Pittsburgh Stm, September 19, 1920, as quoted in Barnouw, TolPcr in Ba lid, p. 63.

4 . William C. White, from an unpublished memoir, as quoted in Barnouw, /iJJver in Babel, pp. 73- 74.

5. The first phrases come rrom a poem by Alfred N. Goldsmith in his book l{ndio Telephmty(New York: Wireless Press, 1918), p. 242; the second group comes tmm a poem by Robert Davis, in Alfred N. Goldsmith and Austin C. Lcscarboura, 11m 11Ji1tg Called Broadcastil~,q (New York: Henry Holt, 1930), p. 344.

6 . frank J. Coppa, "The New Age of Television: The Communications Rev nlutiun in the Living Rm)m," 111 frank J. Coppa :tnd Richard Harmond, eds., J'cc/J ttlllt!fTY 111 t/Jr 'llttrnrrrt/1 C 'mtiii'V ( nuhuquc, lA: Kendall H unl , 1983 ), p. 131 .

IIIII

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l fugh G. J. Ailkcn, 11Jr CtJIIWimJtiS lVmtr:' tidmttlt!fiY twrl tlml'llt'/111 /Cul/tri. ,I '.Iiiii 1932 (Princeton, 1985 ).

Hugh G. J. Aitken, S)"~tott.Y tmd Spnrk: TJJc Origins of RntfltJ (J'rinccl