The Telegraph:

1. The Telegraph: Old media technology as conceptual analogue for new media

2. Definitions • Telegraph - A communications system that transmits and receives simple unmodulated electric impulses, especially one in which the transmission and reception stations are directly connected by wires • Telegraphy (from the Greek words tele = far and graphein = write) is the long-distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters, originally over wire.

3. Video images of the telegraph

4. Vital characteristics of the telegraph • Requires a human medium: telegraph operators were employed per community to send/receive messages using Morse Code • Operators sometimes had personal conversations, although they did not know which station a particular message came from

5. A brief history of the telegraph • Introduced in the 1840s • The first telegram: • Samuel Morse – “What hath God wrought?” • Highly commercial technology – quickly found many industrial uses • Western Union eventually gained a monopoly over the technology • Labor played important influence over the industry, however, because of the need for a human medium to operate the telegraph (operator had to know Morse Code)

6. …brief history of the telegraph, cont… • Industry sought to automate telegraphy – remove the human element (did not actually happen until World War I) • Finally, on January 27, 2006, Western Union finally discontinued all telegram and commercial messaging services.

7. …brief history of the telegraph, cont… • Until telegraph could be automated, companies like Western Union sought to control the operator as much as possible • Sign of the times: women favored as operators as they were seen as more amenable to control • Women were paid less, took over jobs of men • Men bitter, stories came out that attempted to undermine the feminization of the telegraph industry

8. “Telegraphic Fiction” • Late nineteenth century – the telegraph is now 30 or so years old • Telegraphic fictions were dramatic stories that can be viewed as an advanced use of a maturing technology (people conceived of a technology in new, unprecedented ways) • Example: “Wives for Two; or, Joe’s Little Joke” • Places a new media form into the classic story of a love triangle – the new media gives it a twist, it changes the story: identity manipulation • Do you see some correlation here with current new media forms?

9. Characteristics of Telegraph/Internet • Text-based interaction offers a release from bodily constraints (you do not have to be identified with what you say, i.e. anonymity) • Telegraph as an “emancipatory” arena: possible to experiment with selfhood • People can “Communicate mind to mind.” There is no race, no genders, no age…, no infirmities – only minds

10. Significance of the telegraph • Study of the telegraph has been very limited • Was the first form of electronic communication technology • Before this: smoke signals, line-of-sight telegraphs • The first great American monopoly, Western Union, dominated use of the telegraph • As McLuhan suggested in “Gutenberg Galaxy,” telegraph brought changes in nature of language, knowledge, and awareness • The telegraph is a prime example of “old media”

11. Important characteristics of the telegraph • The first media to separate message sending from transportation • Carey: “Telegraph freed communication from the constraints of geography” • Monetary expense and tediousness of creating message: Forced communicators to find ways to send messages in fewer words • Hemingway actually liked the restrictiveness of the medium; said his writing was influenced by his use of the telegraph

12. Dystopic views • Reverend Ezra S. Gannet: said that electricity was “the swift winged messenger of destruction” and the “vital energy of material creation” • As a technology, the telegraph transformed news into more of a commodity, less of a pure cultural product it once was (objects lose uniqueness) • Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism (the “cheapening” of material goods and services) was born largely out of technologies like the telegraph

13. Utopic views • The presumed “annihilation of time and space” that some saw could bind together a country in civil war • Samuel Morse • “It would not be long ere the whole surface of this country would be channeled for those nerves which are to diffuse with the speed of thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring throughout the land; making in fact one neighborhood of the whole country.” • With each new technology, dystopic and utopic perspectives always come out

14. How the telegraph changed journalism • Telegraph fundamentally changed the news: journalism went from partisan to “objective” as result of telegraph • Why? • Made prose leaner, unadorned, with less detail and analysis • However, much more news of this kind was now being disseminated • News judgment routinized, organization of newsroom became more factory-like

15. Essential impact of telegraph on society • Telegraph, like all major communication mediums, primarily had a profound effect on commerce, government, and the military • Critical instrument in evening out markets across space: prices across the US became more uniform (geography now irrelevant)

16. Telegraph as Determiner of time zones • Railroad, business, increased irrelevance of geography created need for uniformity in time • US (Charles Dowd) developed the system of time zones • Standard times offended, angered people • Carey: time zones established “because of the technological power of the telegraph”

17. World Time Zones (by color) (initiated November 18, 1883)

18. Technological determinism? • Should we use a transmission model absolutely to understand the telegraph as a direct determiner of the use of time zones? • How can we look at this from a cultural perspective?

19. I wouldn’t be able to get by without “X”… (my computer, my TV, my cell phone, etc…) • If any one of these things had never been invented, would society be slightly different today?