This volume foregrounds the close, and mutually informing, relationships between mediated communication and technological innovation during the nineteenth century. It draws attention to the fact that communication was a driver of innovation, but also considers how communication practices adapted to new media and technologies.
This volume foregrounds the close, and mutually informing, relationships between mediated communication and technological innovation during the nineteenth century. It draws attention to the fact that communication was a driver of innovation, but also considers how communication practices adapted to new media and technologies. The following themes and subjects are covered:
- The development of the telegraph, from the semaphore in the late eighteenth century to the wireless in the late nineteenth.
- Rhe shift from privately owned to nationalised telegraph infrastructure and services.
- Mail trains, travelling post offices, and accelerated public communication.
- The development of and cultural responses to steam-packet technologies and infrastructures, and accelerated international communication.
- The development of and cultural responses to submarine and transoceanic telegraphy.
- The beginnings of telephony.
Volume 2: Invention, Innovation, Transformation
General Introduction
Volume 2 Introduction
Part 1: Conveying Information: Semaphores, Rails, and Steam Packets
1.1 Optical Telegraph
1. Charles Dibdin, 'The Telegraph', The Songs of Charles Dibdin,
chronologically arranged, with notes, historical, biographical, and
critical... (London: How & Parsons, 1842), pp. 151-152.
2. Telegraphic Signals by Day and Night, The Kaleidoscope, 8: 386 (1827),
p. 161; 8: 388 (1827), pp. 178-179.
3. The Telegraph, The Tourist; or, Sketch Book of the Times, 1: 6 ( 1832),
pp. 41-42.
4. Telegraphic Despatch, Illustrated London News, 16 July 1842, pp. 148-149.
[ Credit for Illustrations: From the British Library Collection: MFM.MLD47]
5. Frederick William Faber, The Old French Telegraphs, in Poems, 3rd edn
(London: Thomas Richardson and Son, 1857), pp. 489-490.
6. Semaphore Signals, Young Folks Paper, 34: 952 (1889), p. 11
1.2 Mail Trains
7. Jehangeer Nowrojee and Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee, Journal of a Residence of Two
Years and a Half in Great Britain (London: William H Allen and Co, 1841), pp.
86-7.
8. Anon, The Travelling Post-Office, Chamberss Journal of Popular
Literature, Science and Arts, 394 (1861), pp.
4447.
9. William Delafield Arnold, The Night Mail Train in India, Frasers
Magazine for Town and Country, 54: 324 (1856), pp. 680-684.
10. John Hollingshead, Right Through the Post, All the Year Round, 1
(1859), pp.
19092.
11. Talbot Thynne, The Mail-Bag Apparatus Competition,
St-Martin's-le-Grand: The Post Office Magazine, 3 (April 1891), pp. 165-170.
12. A Travelling Post-Office, in Account of the Celebration of the Jubilee
of Uniform Inland Penny Postage (London: Jubilee Celebration Committee,
1891), p.
17.
1.3 Mail Packets
13. Anon., Foreign and Colonial Mail-Packet Service, Hampshire Advertiser,
5 July 1851, p.
4.
14. John Capper, A Mail-Packet Town, Household Words 10 (1855), pp.
501504.
15. Anon., Ocean Mails', The Graphic, 16 September 1876, pp. 282-283.
16. Frederick Ebenezer Baines, extracts from The Port of Liverpool, in On
the Track of the Mail Coach (London: Bentley and Son, 1895), pp. 180-181,
185-193
Part 2: Making the Electric Telegraphs
2.1 Inventing the Electric Telegraph
17. Francis Ronalds, extracts from Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph,
and of Some Other Electric Apparatus (London: R. Hunter, 1823), pp. 1-24.
18. G.W.K., Dr. Davy and the Electric Telegraph, Argus, 28 November 1883,
p.
4.
19. Samuel Morse, letter to F.O.J Smith, 15 February 1838, in Samuel Irenaeus
Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (New York: D. Appleton and Company),
pp. 338-340.
20. William Fothergill Cooke, extract from The Electric Telegraph: Was it
invented by Professor Wheatstone (London: W.H. Smith, 1857), pp. 3-9.
21. Charles Wheatstone, extract from A Reply to Mr. Cooke's pamphlet: "The
Electric Telegraph; was it invented by Professor Wheatstone?" (London:
Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855), pp. 3-10
2.2 Telegraphic Railways
22. William Fothergill Cooke, Telegraphic Railways; or, the Single Way
(London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co, 1842), pp. 1-14, 16-34
2.3 The Romance of the Electric Telegraph
23. The Romance of the Electric Telegraph, New Monthly Magazine and
Humorist, 8: 355 (1850), pp. 296-307.
24. Anon., The Electric Telegraph, Chambers's Papers for the People, 9
(1851), p. 32
2.4 Nationalisation
25. Edwin Chadwick, extract from On the Economy of Telegraphy as Part of a
Public System of Postal Communication, Journal of the Society of Arts, 15
(1867), pp. 222-232
26. Extract from The Government and the Telegraphs, Examiner, 18 April
1868), pp. 242-243
27. Extract from Telegraphs Under Government., All the Year Round, 20:477
(1868), pp. 3839
2.5 Pneumatic Tubes
28. Pneumatic Despatch Tubes in Connection with Postal Telegraphy, The
Morning Post, 30 January 1871, p.
6.
29. Postal Telegraph Pneumatic Tubes, The Birmingham Daily Post,29 October
1873, p. 8
Part 3: Transforming Communication: Space, Time, Signals, and Sounds
3.1 Telegraphic Language
30. Extracts from The Handbook of Communication by Telegraph, Describing the
Various Methods, Either by Flags Or Other Semaphores, and the Machines in
Use, Etc. (London: Henry Kent Causton, 1842), pp. 19-25.
3.2 Morses Telegraphy
31. Morses Telegraphy, The Leisure hour: a family journal of instruction
and recreation, 683 (1865), pp. 55-58
3.3 Sonic Perception
32. George Parsons Lathrop, The Singing Wire, in Dreams and Days: Poems
(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1892), pp. 30-32.
33. Anon., The Dangers of Sound-Reading, The Telegraphist, 2:17 (1885), p.
56.
3.4 Romance by Wire
34. Karl von Schlözer, The Romance of a Telegraph Wire, Strand Magazine, 3
(1892), pp. 202-205.
35. Henry James, In the Cage (London: Duckworth, 1898), pp. 2-5, 10-33,
74-80.
Part 4: Submarine Telegraphy
36. The Submarine Telegraph, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, 70: 433
(1851), pp. 562, 567-572.
37. J. C. Maxwell, letter to Lewis Campbell containing The Song of the
Atlantic Telegraph Company (1857), in Lewis Campbell, The Life of James
Clerk Maxwell (London: Macmillan, 1882), pp. 278-280.
38. Anon., The Atlantic Telegraph Expedition, Times, 11 Aug. 1858, p.
4.
39. Laying the Atlantic Cable: Paying out the Land End of the Cable from the
Stern of the 'Niagara', Illustrated London News, 22 August 1857, p.
12.
Credit: Image reproduced with kind permission of Illustrated London News
Ltc/Mary Evans.4
40. William Cullen Bryant, The Electric Telegraph, Speech at a Dinner Given
to Samuel Breese Morse, 1868, in Orations and Addresses (New York, G.P.
Putnams Sons, 1873), pp. 325-330.
41. Anon., At the Bottom of the Sea, The Childs Companion, and Juvenile
Instructor, 116 (1878), pp. 120-121.
42. Isabella Whiteford Rogerson, 'The Atlantic Telegraph', in Poems (Belfast:
W M'Coomb, 1860), p. 221-222.
43. Charles Tennyson Turner, The Telegraph Cable to India. Anticipative', in
Sonnets (London; Cambridge: Macmillan, 1864), p.
50.
44. Rudyard Kipling, 'The Deep-Sea Cables', in The Writings in Prose and
Verse of Rudyard Kipling, Vol 11: Verses, 1889-1896 (New York: C. Scribner
and Sons, 1897).
Part 5 Wireless Telegraphy
5.1 Imagining the Wireless
45. Silvanus P. Thompson, 'Telegraphy Across Space', Journal of the Society
of Arts. 46:2367 (April 1, 1898), pp. 453-460
46. Richard Kerr, extract from Wireless Telegraphy: Popularly Explained
(London: Sheeley, 1898), pp. 93-99.
47. Rudyard Kipling, Wireless, in Traffics and Discoveries (London:
Macmillan, 1904), pp. 213-227.
48. H.C. Fyfe, 'Wireless Wonders of the Future', Review of Reviews, 25: 147
(1902), pp. 143-44.
5.2 Wireless Communication and Journalism
49. Anon., Wireless Telegraphy and Journalism', The Speaker: Liberal Review,
18 (1898), pp. 140-1.
50. Anon., Wireless "Wires" as News Carriers: An Important Journalistic
Enterprise', Westminster Gazette, 15 June 1901, p.
7.
Part 6 Telephony
6.1 Inventing the Telephone
51. Alexander Graham Bell, The Telephone, Musical Standard, 13: 697 (1877),
pp. 358-359, 13: 698 (1877) pp. 375-376, and 13: 699 (1877), pp. 390-92.
52. Anon., extracts from The Telephone, Westminster Review, 53 (1878), pp.
208-221.
6.2 Telephone and Society
53. Thomas Anstey Guthrie, Telephonic Theatre-Goers', in The Man from
Blankley, and other Sketches [ reprinted from Punch] (London: Longmans,
Green, and Co, 1893), pp. 128-133.
54. Thomas Anstey Guthrie, Telephonic Theatre-Goers, Punch, or the London
Charivari, 102 (1892), p.
208. [ Credit: From National Library Scotland
X.231-233 SER]
55. Anon., Church by Telephone, The Speaker, 4 October 1890, pp. 370-371.
56. F. E. Baines, A Future for the Glebe, in On The Track of the Mail Coach
(London: Bentley and Son, 1895), pp. 325-339.
57. Anon, The Telephone, Chamberss Journal, 2:72 (1899), pp. 310-313.
Part 7: Communication, Environment, and Ecology
7. 1 Telegraphic Ecologies
58. The Earthquake Explained, Punch, 23 (1852), p.
237.
59. Anon., Land Telegraph Lines, Chamberss Journal, Issue 798 (1879), pp.
229-232.
60. Thomas Hardy, A Laodicean: A Story of To-Day (London: Macmillan, 1912),
pp. 20-25.
61. Hardwicke Rawnsley, On Seeing a Telegraph Wire and Pillar Post Below
Wordsworths House, in Sonnets at the English Lakes (London: Longmans,
Green,
& Co, 1881), p.
35.
62. A Mesmeric-Telegraphic Discovery, The Ladies Treasury: An Illustrated
Magazine of Entertaining Literature, 28 (1875), pp. 69-74.
7.2 Gutta Percha
63. William T. Brannt, India Rubber, Gutta-Percha, and Balata (London:
Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1900), pp. 224-228, 230-236, 243-245, 269-270.
64. James Collins, Report on the Gutta Percha of Commerce, Being Information
on the Plants Yielding It, Their Geographical Distribution, Climatic
Conditions, and the Possibility of their Cultivation in India: together with
supplementary remarks on Balata and Pseudo-Guttas Proposed as Substitutes, or
as supplementary to Gutta Percha (1878).
7.3 Animals and Communication
65. W. J. Gordon, The Post-Office Horse, in The Horse World of London
(London: Religious Tract Society, 1893), pp. 69-73.
66. Alexander Anderson, Killed on the Telegraph Wire, Chambers Journal,
4:160, p
64.
67. Constance Fenimore Woolson, Martins on a Telegraph Wire, Constance
Fenimore Woolson, ed. Clare Benedict (London, 1930), pp. 81-82
68. Anon., The Whale and the Telegraph Cable, The Childs Companion; or
Juvenile Instructor, n.d., pp. 47-48.
69. John Munro, Pests of the Wire, English Illustrated Magazine, 191
(August 1899), pp. 492-497.
Bibliography
Index
Karin Koehler is a Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Bangor University. Her research explores the relationship between nineteenth-century literature and connective infrastructure, focusing on Anglophone and Welsh-language material.
Nicola Kirkby held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Royal Holloway, London (2019-2023), investigating nineteenth-century infrastructure and literary culture. Her works include Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press).
Kathleen McIlvenna is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Derby. Her research focuses on histories of work, health and retirement in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
Ellen Smith is a historian and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol. Her work explores communication cultures in colonial South Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Harriet M. Thompson is Visiting Research Fellow in nineteenth-century literature and culture in the Department of English, Kings College London. Her research explores the relationship between communications technologies and print culture.
Eleanor Hopkins is a Senior Policy Adviser in Higher Education & Research at the British Academy. She provides strategic oversight of the Academy's Research & Development (R&D), innovation and skills policy.
