Telephone History

This chapter surveys the history of telecommunications from a global perspective and highlights three influential interpretative traditions. It has two parts. The first part defines “telecommunications” and sketches the main dimensions of four telecommunications networks over a two-hundred-year period – the optical telegraph, the electric telegraph, the landline telephone, and the mobile telephone (and its predecessor, the wireless telegraph). The second part shows how historical scholarship on topics in the history of telecommunications has been shaped by three intellectual traditions: the Large Technical Systems (LTS) approach; political economy; and the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT).

"Il volume, grazie a un apparato documentario finora inedito, analizza le prime fasi di sviluppo del telefono in Italia tra l’ultimo ventennio dell’Ottocento e la prima guerra mondiale. Come venne accolto, interpretato e “metabolizzato” il nuovo mezzo di comunicazione nella società dell’epoca? Quali gruppi sociali compresero le sue potenzialità e quali, invece, lo trascurarono o addirittura ne ostacolarono la diffusione? Chi furono i primi abbonati al telefono, come lo utilizzarono e cosa significò per loro? Si possono individuare delle caratteristiche peculiari nello sviluppo del telefono nel nostro paese tali da delineare una sorta di “via italiana alle telecomunicazioni”? Le origini del telefono in Italia mira a rispondere a queste e ad altre domande, analizzando una fase della storia della comunicazione italiana fino a oggi poco considerata ma fondamentale per comprendere appieno l’evoluzione delle telecomunicazioni, un settore sempre più al centro della vita politica, economica e culturale della società contemporanea.

This book aims at identifying the turning points in the early history of Italian telephone (1877–1915) considering at the same level political, economical, technical, and social dimensions and trying to reconstruct conflicts and connivances among relevant social
groups. The early history of the Italian telephone can be subdivided into four periods: the urban networks building during the 1880s; the nationalization attempt, concentration process and failed building of the long-distance network during the 1890s; the nationalization process between 1903 and 1907; and the failure of public management and return to private operation between 1907 and the First World War. This analysis helps identify some characteristics of Italian telephone history that
configure a kind of Italian style in telecommunications: the relevance of old media (electric telegraph in particular) for the new one, political uncertainties, foreign investments, difficulties in interconnecting different systems, a lively and overlooked demand."

COMS 200 (3 credits) – History of Communication I

This course surveys the important social and cultural implications of major developments in communications from prehistory to the electronic era.

Required lecture course given in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University.

Multiple variations on this syllabus taught since then.

""Il concetto e le strutture del broadcasting non nacquero nel corso degli anni venti del Novecento con la radio, ma furono un’eredità della cosiddetta “telefonia circolare”. Tra la fine dell’Ottocento e i primi venti anni del nuovo secolo, infatti, il telefono venne usato sia come mezzo di comunicazione punto-a-punto, sia come mezzo di diffusione di contenuti editoriali in molti paesi tra cui Francia, Ungheria, Inghilterra, Stati Uniti e Italia. Questo volume si concentra sul caso dell’Araldo Telefonico, un servizio di telefonia circolare avviato a Roma (e poi esteso a Milano e Bologna) dall’ingegnere Luigi Ranieri nei primi anni dieci del Novecento e che, tra il 1923 e il 1924, partecipò alla nascita della radiofonia italiana e alla fondazione dell’URI (poi EIAR e oggi RAI). La radio prima della radio è un libro di storia della comunicazione che tuttavia fa luce, anche grazie a una documentazione finora inedita, sulle origini del sistema dei media di massa contemporaneo.

Concepts and structures of broadcasting did not suddenly appear during the 1920s with radio, but were inherited from the so-called "circular telephone." Between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, the telephone was used as both a point-to-point and a broadcasting medium in France, Britain, Hungary, the United States and Italy. This paper focuses on the Italian case, the so-called Araldo Telefonico. Appearing in Rome in the 1910s thanks to engineer Luigi Ranieri, its schedule included educational, informational and entertainment programs. After World War I, the circular telephone was launched in Milan and Bologna. Araldo Telefonico and its wireless brother Radio Araldo were also involved in negotiations establishing the first Italian radio company, URI (forefather of today's public broadcasting company, RAI). This article narrates the history of a dead medium in Italy and highlights its relevance for radio and media history more generally.""

The telephone and other news-gathering technologies had been present in US newsrooms since the late 1800s. But increasing access to them by the mid-1930s meant more agency and autonomy for news workers, freed from having to either share phones with colleagues in the newsroom or fight for access to phones outside of it (at least not as much). Granted, not every newsroom was awash in phones. Increasingly, however, after 1920 reporters and their phones became as common a vocational association as reporters and typewriters. The car closely followed, and soon the two technologies were united, via radio, on an experimental basis in the “radio car.” This latter technology allowed the reporter to increase his or her reach (and independence) beyond the newsroom. This study briefly explores the adoption of these disruptive technologies on newsroom relationships and news workers during the decades after the First World War.

Concepts and structures of broadcasting did not suddenly appear during the 1920s with radio, but were inherited from the so-called "circular telephone." Between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, the telephone was used as both a point-to-point and a broadcasting medium in France, Britain, Hungary, the United States and Italy. This paper focuses on the Italian case, the so-called Araldo Telefonico. Appearing in Rome in the 1910s thanks to engineer Luigi Ranieri, its schedule included educational, informational and entertainment programs. After World War I, the circular telephone was launched in Milan and Bologna. Araldo Telefonico and its wireless brother Radio Araldo were also involved in negotiations establishing the first Italian radio company, URI (forefather of today's public broadcasting company, RAI). This article narrates the history of a dead medium in Italy and highlights its relevance for radio and media history more generally.

The British phonebox has achieved iconic status, recognised the world over as a symbol of Britain. But their numbers have declined massively along with a 90% drop in usage in the last 10 years. So has the death knell been sounded for the British Phonebox? Certainly not, say Nigel Linge and Andy Sutton.
Published in the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals Journal Volume 11 -  Part 1 - 2017.

I media digitali sono spesso descritti come il futuro obbligato, il cui successo è dato per scontato. Ma c’è un altro lato della digitalizzazione che viene poco considerato e che una puntuale analisi storica aiuta a mostrare: anche le tecnologie digitali a volte non funzionano o vengono abbandonate dagli utenti, i processi d’innovazione che sembrano inevitabili s’interrompono, alcuni mezzi che saranno nelle case di tutti domani diventano presto obsoleti. In poche parole i media digitali possono fallire. Questo è il tema di Fallimenti digitali, un libro che raccoglie contributi originali dedicati a differenti settori mediali (dalla fotografia alle reti, dalla TV alla radio, dalla stampa alla realtà virtuale, dal cinema ai videogiochi) al fine di esplorare e decostruire la categoria di fallimento nell’universo digitale. Il risultato è un lavoro “archeologico” di riscoperta e scavo nella storia recente di quelli che (spesso in maniera impropria) vengono definiti nuovi media. Un lavoro che favorisce la riemersione di varie storie d’insuccesso poco conosciute, interrotte e sacrificate sull’altare delle retoriche “vincenti” proprie del
tecno-capitalismo digitale, in cui anche il fallimento è propedeutico al successo futuro in piena logica da start up. Adatto a un lettore curioso così come agli studiosi di media e comunicazione, il libro vuole sottolineare come la digitalizzazione non costituisca un percorso scontato e lineare, ma si presenti piuttosto come un processo incerto, molto più traballante e insicuro di quanto siamo comunemente spinti a immaginare.

Squilli di carta. I primi 40 anni del telefono nelle pagine della letteratura italiana 1 di Gabriele Balbi Poi metteremmo il telegrafo e magari il telefono -per non parlare dei piccioni viaggiatori. Come staremo bene quest'altro anno, se campiamo! G. Pascoli, Lettere ad Alfredo Caselli, 1902 La telefonia in Italia: 1881-1925 Dopo i primi esperimenti di fine anni Settanta a Roma e Milano, la telefonia in Italia trovò una sistemazione organica nel Decreto Legge proposto dall'on. Baccarini nel 1881, in cui vennero accordate già 37 concessioni a società private.

"It is possible to see “the speaking machine”, as the telephone was often called in the contemporary press, as having formed a speaking machine of the whole society at the end of the nineteenth century. This is because it provided a pattern not only for electric communication in the modern age, but also for the social system viewed as a whole. The telephone can be seen as an intersection of powers in and through which both the modern communication and industrial order — which are not to be treated as separate from each other — assumed their shapes. It is my intention here to bring out the path of development through which communication, seen as both the object and means of political projects during the age of telephone’s heyday, was given a pivotal position in the self-descriptions of society."

This chapter analyses the ‘Italian style’ in the history of telecommunications, focusing on the national ‘constitutive choices’ made by governments between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and adopting a comparative and transnational perspective in order to identify similarities and differences on the international scene. The first part provides a survey of the existing literature on the origin and development of Italian telecommunications; the authors argue that, despite the abundance of sources, the historical analysis still
remains rather limited. In the second part the peculiarities of Italian telecommunications during its early stages of development (between 1850 and 1914) are identifi ed and described. Three main issues are discussed: first, the
development of a ‘telegraph paradigm’ later adapted to other telecommunication systems; second monopoly, above all state monopoly, as the management model that was adopted in that period; fi nally, the persisting technological backwardness, in sharp contrast with the high qualitative level of technicians and managers. In the conclusion this chapter discusses how some of these early characteristics – described by the authors as constitutive choices – influenced the history of Italian telecommunications as a whole and created a clearly recognizable national style.

This report explores the history of alternative communication technologies and networks (“alternets”). It focuses on three historic formations of alternets: 1) the community telephone networks of the late 19th and early 20th century, 2) the Free Radio movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and 3) the first generation of community networks providing Internet access in the 1990s. For each of these movements, the report offers case studies of specific alternets in various countries, in Europe and in North America. For each of them, we focus on key issues of the netCommons project such as the governance of networks, their long-term sustainability and technological aspects, as well as the political and legal hurdles they faced. The report concludes by drawing parallels and lessons that may be relevant to guide the actions of today’s community networks.

Although politicians and private companies were the driving forces of the early Italian telephone, this paper aims to understand why and how between nineteenth and twentieth century users influenced the evolution of this new medium. First of all they set up a continuous dialogue with other social groups. In telephone books private companies gave suggestions to subscribers and, indirectly, they showed the allowed (and not allowed) uses and, finally, which were the users’ wishes. Subscribers pressed also politicians for obtaining a more efficient and geographically diffused telephone service: they organized themselves in cooperatives, they created associations and, in general, they set up influential lobbies. Secondly subscribers imposed many way of use that forced changes in telephonic administration. For example, for long time Italian telephones were managed with flat rates: the amount of use didn’t influence the final billing and subscribers often lend their telephone. This social practice, called “parasitism” by politicians and companies, forced major changes in rate’s politics. Finally, subscribers tried to “metabolize” this new medium using it in “unexpected ways”: the telephone was used as an alarm clock, as a tool for knowing the time, for fishing, for surgery, even for knowing the quality of wines. All these aspects will be researched using a corpus of sources like technical journal, newspapers, parliamentary debates, literature of fiction, telephone books.

Keywords: History of the Telephone; Italian subscribers; alternative uses; media co-construction

This article aims at identifying the turning points in the early history of Italian telephone (1877–1915) considering at the same level political, economical, technical, and social dimensions and trying to reconstruct conflicts and connivances among relevant social groups. The early history of the Italian telephone can be subdivided into four periods: the urban networks building during the 1880s; the nationalization attempt, concentration process and failed building of the long-distance network during the 1890s;
the nationalization process between 1903 and 1907; and the failure of public management and return to private operation between 1907 and the First World War. This analysis helps identify some characteristics of Italian telephone history that
configure a kind of Italian style in telecommunications: the relevance of old media (electric telegraph in particular) for the new one, political uncertainties, foreign investments, difficulties in interconnecting different systems, a lively and overlooked
demand.

Although politicians and private companies were the driving forces of the early Italian telephone, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries users influenced the evolution of this new medium in a critical way. First of all they set up a continuous dialogue with the other relevant social groups. For example, through telephone books, private companies either gave many kinds of suggestions or criticized "incorrect" uses of their subscribers: this was a symbolic space where discussion took place. Secondly subscribers imposed models of consumption that forced changes in the telephonic administration. For example, for a long time Italian telephones were offered with flat rates and subscribers often borrowed their telephones, sometimes asking for money and sometimes for free. This social practice, called "parasitism", forced major changes in charging policies. Finally, subscribers tried to "metabolize" this new medium using it in "unexpected ways": the telephone was used or pictured as a tool fit to be used for fishing, for surgery, to evaluate the quality of wines, as a video-phone, as a "broadcasting tool". This paper aims to understand why and how users modified and co-constructed not only the practices of use, but even the way in which the Italian telephone was understood.

In his 1930s memoir 'Berlin Childhood around 1900', Walter Benjamin recollects the ringing of the telephone as a sound that sharply interrupted the quiet of his middle-class family home and signalled the beginning of a new era. Following Benjamin's lead, the article retraces the decades around 1900 as an era of transformation in which fundamental changes in the urban environment, in society and technology also lead to a crucial change of auditory experience. The new sounds of this era, from telephone rings to city noises to gramophone recordings, and the ways in which contemporaries dealt with them can therefore be used as a kind of sonic probe to detect broader transformations of modern experience.

Las cabinas telefónicas, hoy desaparecidas de la mayor parte de las ciudades y pueblos de España o reconvertidas, proporcionaron durante más de cincuenta años la posibilidad de utilizar el teléfono a personas que, sin estas, no hubieran tenido acceso a este servicio 1 . En el caso de Bilbao, las primeras, que sólo permitían establecer llamadas entre usuarios situados en dos puntos de la ciudad, se instalaron durante los primeros días de 1963 2 , las que permitían realizadas entre interlocutores situados en diferentes localidades de la provincia comenzaron a ser instaladas al comienzo de 1970.

Today’s technology emerges from yesterday’s fantasies. And the technological materializations of the future are already present in the imaginations of the present. This blog post traces the history of the smartphone and points to the ecological problems and social potentials of globally networked communication systems that are kept going by the use of these miniaturized devices. The digital universe still contains a surplus of possibilities that can be activated in very different trajectories.

This article explores the incursion of Colombian women in wage labor dynamics through an analysis of the reasons, actors and situations that characterized the strike of telephone female operators from Bogota, which occurred on June 1928 in the framework of the conflicts derived from an incipient industrial and urban modernization. The telephone female operators were women who transgressed the usual boundaries of home or convent environment, in order to enter into a labor world that gave them importance into the family finances but imposed them new forms of underestimation and exploitation. It was precisely the demand for better salaries, Sunday rest and more humane treatment what led to the outbreak of the telephone operators strike. After difficult negotiations in which the support of the press and the public was essential, the protests ended up with the fulfillment of the strikers’ demands.

Historic telegraph and telephone material culture are frequently encountered but seldom differentiated during archaeological site and survey work in Colorado. The poles, wires, and insulators that comprise these cultural resources are often recorded simply as transmission lines. The research reported here is the first archaeologically focused comparative study of telegraph and telephone material culture designed to help archaeologists differentiate between the two communication systems. Differentiating and documenting these systems fills gaps in an inadequate historical record of their spatial and temporal evolution and contributes to site and survey area interpretations. We find substantial material culture similarities due to shared hardware and the temporal overlap of the introduction of these systems to Colorado. We also identify several material attributes to help differentiate the systems. Accurately identifying cultural resources is a mainstay of archaeological work and we make progress by understanding the possibilities and challenges of differentiating these poorly documented resources.

The forced labour camp at Kirchbichl (Tyrol, Austria) was run during the National Socialist regime largely for the construction of a hydropower plant on the river Inn as part of a planned enlargement of the hydropower industry in the Alps. Archaeological excavations at this site brought up a broad spectrum of materiality from different spheres of activity. In this case, the focus lies on a type of objects which has been only rarely discussed so far. Material relics of telecommunication raise questions concerning the connection of the camp administration to a communication network, which made an immediate response possible, as regards the progress of the hydropower plant construction site, but also in terms of the recruiting and management of forced labourers.

For many, the telephone was a technological triumph capable of connecting worlds by instantly bridging gulfs of time and space, but for Osip Mandel'shtam and Vladimir Nabokov, it represented nothing less than the thorough problematization of meaningful communication. A shared—and very real—antipathy for the instrument informed its representation in the writers’ creative works, where the telephone at best hinders interpersonal exchange, and more often renders communication all but impossible. This is not to say that for these two writers the telephone acts merely as a benignly inert obstacle, however; the device does convey information, but its meaning is usually of decidedly ominous portent. Part of a larger study exploring the exaltation of the physical realm and, more specifically, the materiality of text in the lives and works of Mandel'shtam and Nabokov, this paper buttresses the broader observations by highlighting their perfect counterpoint, as it is typified in one freighted trope.

Poor foolish boy, why vainly grasp at the fleeting image that eludes you? The thing you are seeing does not exist: only turn aside and you will lose what you love. What you see is but the shadow cast by your reflection; in itself it is nothing. It comes with you, and lasts while you are there; it will go when you go, if go you can. -Narcissus By The Pool 1 The story of Echo and Narcissus is one of attendant proximities and unrequited caress. Its vocabulary is one of reflections that suggest a coming together but which ultimately denies any proper touch. Echo becomes locked in a pattern of vocal loops and, bound by the flighty vernacular of birds and ghosts and air, is robbed of a full bodily presence. Denied possession of her voice she begins to waste away and can never properly express her feelings for the man she loves. Potential conversation is reduced to the re-voicing of his fragmentary call; flighty Echo is the original fan girl whose identity constitutes a series of appreciative retweets.

In this article, I address a methodological issue that has come into focus after the advent of the " material turn " ; the matter of how to study historical, sociomaterial practices. In response, I propose a method for materially oriented qualitative interviews, in which historical artifacts are used as elicitation devices. I focus on three ways in which material devices can aid historical research in interviews: I first emphasize that materiality can aid the qualitative interviewer by providing specificity, as the material presence of historical artifacts can urge participants to remember details, directing the conversation toward the specificity of mundane artifacts whose characteristics can be difficult to recollect. Second, I suggest that such artifacts may be used also to aid narrative structure, guiding and prompting participants to follow the story they infer from a particular setup of artifacts. Third, I propose that the active engagement with historical artifacts in the qualitative interview allows participants to access body memories of using these artifacts, eliciting the particulars of abandoned bodily practices. I end by discussing the possibilities for improving the " materially oriented qualitative interview " —method and applying it in other contexts.

In this project, we propose the use of VoIP application as an video conference instead of using the normal telephone line. This technology facilitates the users in the aspect of cost saving as the conference can be made access to the internet without hav of carrying out this project is to test the performance of the codecs installed in the softphone software based on jitter, mean opinion score (MOS), delay and packet loss. The performance of the codecs is analyzed by using network performance monitoring tool available these day. Based on the result, we suggest the best codecs to be used for the software that can guarantee the best performance for the user. In this project, we propose the use of VoIP application as an alternative for making audio and video conference instead of using the normal telephone line. This technology facilitates the users in the aspect of cost saving as the conference can be made, as long as the users have the access to the internet without having to be charged with any additional charges. The objective of carrying out this project is to test the performance of the codecs installed in the softphone software based on jitter, mean opinion score (MOS), delay and packet loss. The performance by using network performance monitoring tool available these day. Based on the result, we suggest the best codecs to be used for the software that can guarantee the best performance for the user. voice over IP; VoIP. alternative for making audio and video conference instead of using the normal telephone line. This technology facilitates the as long as the users have the ing to be charged with any additional charges. The objective of carrying out this project is to test the performance of the codecs installed in the softphone software based on jitter, mean opinion score (MOS), delay and packet loss. The performance by using network performance monitoring tool available these day.

In 1989, years after the majority of Israeli city dwellers, the members of Kibbutz Y celebrated the installation of telephones in their apartments. We trace the cultural biography of the telephone in Kibbutz Y, with special emphasis upon the practical and symbolic transition from public to private telephones, in order to discuss the role of deliberation in the adoption of new technologies. The biographical approach permits us to discuss parallel developments in the technology, the kibbutz ideology, the society and the interrelationships between them. The article argues that even within a community where ideology is transparent, such as a kibbutz, contradictions and dilemmas inform users' discourse.

L’articolo prende in esame le evoluzioni storiche di due tecnologie nel contesto mediatico italiano: la prima, l’“Araldo telefonico”, nel anni ‘10 del Novecento; la seconda, la Televisione Mobile, nei primissimi anni del XXI secolo. Il articolo è suddiviso in 3 sezioni. La prima contiene una breve descrizione del funzionamento, dei significati e della storia dell’“Araldo Telefonico”, con particolare riferimento ad un processo che ebbe per protagonista l’ideatore dell’Araldo italiano, l’ingegner Luigi Ranieri. La seconda illustra l’avvento della Mobile Tv in Italia, concentrandosi essenzialmente sulle aziende che ne forniscono il servizio e sui contenuti da esse erogati. Nella terza parte, infine, vi è la tesi centrale del lavoro. Pur considerando infatti le notevoli differenze strutturali, economiche e socio-tecniche tra i due media, si sostiene come per entrambi venga sostanzialmente a cadere una distinzione comunemente accettata nel corso del Novecento: quella tra comunicazione punto-a-punto e broadcasting.

From the moment it was established, the Bauhaus was a site of investigation into not only art and design but the possibilities of a new means of creation— one founded on experiments into distribution, mobility, and assembly. From Walter Gropius’s adaptation of architecture for the age of machines to László Moholy- Nagy’s “telephone pictures,” the Bauhaus provided insights into the nature of operation in the modern world. In the formation of his school, Gropius spoke of the “universal unity” that would replace the dualistic conception of the creative and creation. But, as I will suggest, one of the legacies of this unity was the radical distribution of productive practice through the instruments of modernity. In its wholehearted embrace of modernity’s constraints, and the new infrastructures of design and distribution it employed, the logistical legacy of the Bauhaus leaves behind a form of production that is, if not suspect (in the case of Moholy-Nagy’s Telephonbild), at the very least obfuscating and instrumental. This chapter reflects on the logistical legacies of the Bauhaus and their implications for the future of making, not only in artistic practice but in industrial manufacture. This is evident not only in the practice of later artists like Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, Tony Smith, and Donald Judd, but in contemporary productions ranging from Atelier Van Lieshout’s Almost Perfect Chair— designed on a cocktail napkin and sent, without instruction, for production in China— to the idea of digital assembly itself.

This article examines hidden workers in media technologies and how media companies use them to engineer sociality. It focuses on two types of workers: telephone operators in the early 20th century and contemporary content moderators in social media. This article proposes processed listening as a concept that is better suited to examine their work, especially attending to multiplicities of actors, spaces, and temporalities. Drawing on science and technology studies and sound studies, I examine how processed listening involves the way hidden media workers tune in and out of multilayered mediated spaces to monitor, detect, measure, categorize, and filter unwanted people and behaviors. In doing so, they embody both the communication channel and the filter. They create a feeling of immediacy that is sold as “real-time” experience, while shaping what is sociality. In this way, media companies can avoid being accountable for the decision-making processes involved in the operation of their services.

In the US, the words ‘telephone surveillance’ bring to mind contemporary security concerns about smart phone tracking, the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal, and the telecommunications provisions of the Patriot Act. Yet telephone surveillance is as old as telephony itself, dating back to the nearly simultaneous commercialization of the telephone and phonograph in 1878. First put to use by users, so they would have a written record of business meetings held over the phone, recorders were later put to use by police for surreptitious recording of criminal suspects’ conversations. This article examines telephone surveillance by American law enforcement agencies from the inception of telephone service to the passage of the Federal Wiretap Law in 1968, focusing on the challenges an advancing, proliferating, and shrinking technology posed for Fourth Amendment law. To highlight the technological, institutional and cultural interactions that have shaped Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the article deploys Jack Balkin’s theory of cultural software and Anslem Strauss’s concept of a negotiated order, and brings together major cases, federal legislation, and evidence of government surveillance. The article shows how telephone surveillance brought the Fourth Amendment into prominence and inspired many of its most contentious debates; the article argues that during the first 90 years of telephone usage in America, laws on search and seizure developed not from constitutional consistency or logic, but as the result of a complex negotiation process involving new media and human agency.

Time signals provide a sense of "despatialized simultaneity," a rhythm to the everyday lives of billions of people, and experiences of liveness. This article offers a history of time signals from the 19th to the 21st centuries, identifying three typologies: scheduled time signals, sent mainly by radio and TV; on-demand, such as those of the speaking clock; and automatized, transmitted by the Network Time Protocol for digital devices. The article stresses the importance of time signals in media history and the significance of an infrastructural network of timekeeping/timesharing for the functioning of media themselves.

Aunque durante el franquismo existieron grandes inconvenientes para que las mujeres trabajaran fuera del hogar y desarrollara su propia vida, un grupo de ellas tuvo la ocasión de disfrutar de trabajo remunerado, entre ellas las telefonistas. Eran chicas jóvenes, solteras, que en muchos casos tuvieron una extensa carrera en la única compañía telefónica de la época. En Bilbao las mujeres comenzaron a trabajar desde la llegada de la CTNE a la ciudad en el otoño de 1924. Desde esos días y hasta el final del franquismo nunca faltaron jóvenes trabajando en la sede de la compañía situada en la calle Buenos Aires.

This essay is based on the data collected in a two-year research project (between 2010–2012), under the title Telephony And Turkish Modernization: Social History of Telephone Since The Ottoman Era (1881–2010), which was primarily concerned with the social history of telephone in Turkey during is peculiarly long history of implementation and dispersal. The project was conducted as oral history and archive research, and a comparative approach was adopted to identify and analyze the divergent nature of their findings.
According to the findings of the researched archive materials (newspapers, comic and popular magazines), the implementation of telephone into the Turkish houses created complex feelings, which found its expression as both “emulation” and “intimidation” attached to the experience of telephone in a double system of representation. Whereas the oral history research findings are discordant in the sense that telephone is remembered as a symbol of “solidarity” and “sharing” in the narratives of telephone memories, and was accommodated into the traditional everyday life of the neighborhood.
Through the case of telephone technology, this essay aims at pointing out the gap between the discursive construction of the elements of the experience of modernity and the actual experience of the historical subjects; and argues that this gap should be disclosed with more ethnographic studies for it also points a feeling of ‘lack’ that pervasively infuses itself into our present and finds its expression in the self-narratives of the oral history as a nostalgia for the past.

La telefonía en Marruecos tuvo como protagonista indiscutible a Emilio Rotondo y Nicolau. En 1883 instaló en Tánger la primera de las redes telefónicas que también consiguió implantar en otras localidades importantes del país, en los años anteriores al sistema de protectorados. Su hijo tuvo que hacer frente al empeño francés para hacerse con las redes de Casablanca y de Tánger. Consiguió mantener la propiedad y la explotación de ésta última hasta la década de 1930 cuando, inmerso en circunstancias personales comprometidas, se vio obligado a constituir con otros socios la empresa Rotondo y Compañía, de la que salió poco después.

This paper focuses on women who worked at Bell Telephone Company in the USA during 1930s and 1940s as telephone operators, and the training programmes they went through. Transmission of information depended on their actions because they had to facilitate the switchboards, and therefore held a crucial position as part of the communication channel. Thus, Bell felt they should tune their ‘bad’ behaviour which embodied noise in their systems. In order to maintain equilibrium, Bell enmeshed Michel Foucault’s disciplinary and biopower forms of governmentality and developed a hybrid form. This combination was seen in their flagship training programme, A Design for Living, where Bell penetrated operators’ bodies and minds, inside and outside work. When the operators revolted, Bell realised power should be exercised through automated dial machines. This would then become an inspiration for cybernetics who aimed to control communication systems that constructed information’s correct behaviour, and consequently users.