Inventing American broadcasting, 1899-1922 Douglas, Susan J. (Susan Jeanne). Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, c1987. ----------- lecture social construction of technology social construction approach : 5 threads: 1. ideological : how technology intersects, shapes, a set of believes >>> conception of radio >>>from active to passive audience, speakers to listeners >> naturalization of private system : profit driven >> it has to make money :: profit is natural >>>> active consumption is part of the american life >> is what makes the american system works individual consumers exercises his freedom by saying what to consume, to listen, not what to say, to activ 2. structure : role of institutions in the shaping, making of the technology ::: navy, corporations, press press role >> bringing light and also silencing certain kinds of information 3. political :: what kind of political arguments and rationalization issues of national security 4. regulatory practices 5. personal histories : personalities : biographies historical events >> raises he profile of certain events >> historical moments ignores how technology intersects social class structures, gender, nature of the story that she tell us >>> narrative strategy : plot, characters, arc, turning points spectrum : ether >>> as proprierty, as commodity >>> how do you move spectrum into a proprierty right framework? spectrum as common proprierty >>> public, share >>> necesity for regulation how do you share the ehter when all the companies want to explote it how do you organize the commons? tragedy of the commons >> overuse, overpopularte >>>definition of responsability >> who is in a position to ajudicate spectru m? how do you make those decision? spectrum is continues >> ignores national borders >> AT&T interest >> protecting their monopoly of telephone >> repeater technology for colonizing broader areas >> moving into long distance :: less interest in broadcasting signal transmision over distances : degreades >>> boosting technology so the signal can regenerates itself state as guarantor of the "public interest" >>> dinamic of use, need, companies pushing, the gov tries to decide what the people needs regulation and innovation >>> argument is regulation a force against creativity? navy >>> military funds research ::: >>> satellites, internet >>> where does creativity come? margins? military? corporations? creation of national emergency security systems corporation international relationships >>> germans , americans satellites and military >>>> designed for warfare >> controlling territory, controlling people >>> exclusion >> divide >>> *********************** introduction of radio technology set up of the broadcasting system in the US >>> advanced capitalist system >>> large and robust market of consumers :: people has to believe in the importance of leisure, instant serlf-gratification, and spending desire of luxuriate in the private, status seeking, self-indulgent offerings of consumer capitalism USA society tensions >>> values of industrial capitalism vs advanced capitalism >> cultural contradictions media helped to construct new myths and heroes that justify and romanticize the status quo media serve to mediate between old and new ::: images and language values and beliefs of the established print media shape the new broadcast media what scholars have identified as the functions of the mass media in the 20 c, were being formulated and refined during the first 23 years of radio history struggle to perfect and control the invention for commercial explotation. business strategies developments in the journalistic arena could dramatically affect technology as well as business strategy 2 historical realities: -process of centralization and institutionalization : public and private process of technical change early development of radio media and hegemony >> ligitimation and perpetuatuion of the stablished social order dominant belief system : "faith in capitalism as an economic system superior to all others, the insitence that our existing form of goverment is democratic, the creed that consumerism equals freedom, and the legitimation of economic and political elites as the rightful holders of authority" (XVIII) trend towards corporate centralization subculture of middle class men and boys >> tinkering as a way to cope with the pressures of modernization >> rebellion against lost of autonomy tensions between amateur operators, independent inventors, and interested corporations >> how radio fit in American society popular press >> field of battle :: accomodation of technology and culture, institutions and the individual press ended sided with capital during dramatic stuggles reinforcing values in the press journalistic mode of presenting new tech visible bennefits of electricity the inventor-hero romanticism about electricity >> miraculous domination of the force and power >> inflated language, flowery >> romantic language >> in the press :: heroes romantic prose sold newspapers >> sensationalism romantic rhetoric >> mediated between tradition and innovation when applied to technical change >> helped legitimate the private and corporate control newspapers were businesses american capitalism twin desires: to uplift mankind and yet to enjoy the benefits of capitalism rise of mass entertainment >>> books, magazins during the civil war new genres of entertainment : comic strip, amusement park, dime novel, vaudeville coming to terms with the electromagnetic environment interactions between technology , business strategy, and the press. technology as process :: evolving relationship between people and tehir environment which is affected by multiple factors social construction of radio white middle class men construction of meaning >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> MARCONI AND THE AMERICA'S CUP the making of an inventory-hero celebration of the hero in american press >> strategic "The hero represented not only what was possible in individualas, but also what was best and most promising in American society." 3 doing heroic things and achieving dreams myths of individualism: faith contemporary journalism responding and shaping new communication technology Dewey: war hero, becomes stereotypical Dewey :: coming from the anonimity, the ransk of the people Dewey's welcoming parade in nyc, 1899 America-Spanish war >>> as a holy crusade >>> application of american technology, USA as having a mission in the world tech and social progress >>> inflated language used to describe american progress relationship men-nature >>> nature cast as female and science and technology as male male control americans mission: to spread democracy around the world, as DEwey >> and technological and social progress values : selfless, serve the free enterprise, democracy, altruism construction of Deweys heroism >>Marconi 1896 :: the british neglected his wired telegraph because was derivative, a hybrid 1899 in nyc :: 4 days after Dewey parade, during the American Yacht Cup marconi as a tinkerer and informal educated experimented by his own mother >> insisted in the english language and helped him setting up his lab vision: take wireless transmission out of the academic lab >> employ it in a commercially successful system of communication >> he wanted to be paid >> he needed to transmite in miles not in feet july 20, 1897 : WIRELESS TELEGRAPH AND SIGNAL COMPANY LIMITED no goverment support >> publicity stunts by marconi yacht race, oct, 1899 2 steamships equipped with wireless, relaying, stations set up at the navesing highlands and 34 st in nyc success marconi is placed as an inventor-hero "the self-made man" >>> arduous labor and ingenuity london accent in his english technological display and drama and the public >> yacht race as perfect occacion. >>>> romanticism >>> connections tehc and society can be highlighted "Wireless seemed the technical equivalent of telepathy consrtucting the meaning of wireless telegraphy in the press >>> web of significance 26-27 >> contradiction In 1899, the press began constructing the meaning of wireless telegraphy. What emerged was a web of significance containing noteworthy lines of tension. On the one hand, wireless would be the agent of altruism, because it would save lives and promote mutual understanding. It would reduce modern-day loneliness and isolation by providing individuals with a way to contact loved ones far away. On an individual and societal level, then, wireless would restore a sense of community in anincreasingly anticommunal world. And wireless might even undermine the seemingly ineluctable march of monopoly capitalism by allowing Americans to circumvent Western Union and Bell Telephone, and to take modern communications into their own hands. At the same time, however, wireless would expedite commerce, bolster the military, and further the economic goals of the press. Wireless would be antimonopoly but pro-business. All these contradictory desires swirled around the invention, defining it, simultaneously, as the restorer of tradition and the harbinger of a new era. Wireless would, at one and the same time, promote capitalism and defy it. romnatic discourse and technology marconi achieves public victory >> next step to establish his invention in commercial spheres >> marketing ************************ ((((((((((((((( Ch. 2 social construction of radio begns also in oct, 1899 with the yacht race journalist presentation of the foreinger inventor heroo >>> romantic language help people to understand 30 members of a culture whose popular press had lionized Marconi and had cast his device as revolutionary and filled with unlimited potential, but they were also part of the scientific and engineering subcultures that viewed Marconi and his invention from a considerably more criticalstance. According to the new professional codes, men such as Edison and Marconi had not been properly trained, did not embrace the requisite body of information or outlook, and did not pay homage to the recently enshrined leaders or networks of the scientific and engineering professions. 31 Marconi's cut-and-try approach represented an outdated and increasingly discredited method that for too long had made their work seem unsystematic and unscientific. The London Electrician and New York's Electrical World commented that Marconi's device was unpatentable It was the special combination of these components into a system, and a determined application of that system to commercial and naval communications, which made Marconi's contribution special. What the newspapers categorized as a major technological advance, scientists and engineers viewed as a technical step backward. 33 popular vs technical press Had Marconi introduced his invention as a method of broadcasting information to the public, several of these criticisms would have been less troubling. But his device was conceived and presented as a telegraph using no wires. It was meant to send messages in dots and dashes to a specifically designated private receiver. not compete with or replace line wires. Rather, wireless would be used where telegraphy was impossible, such as between ships or from ship to shore. Thus, the invention, at least with regard to applications, was not offering a revolutionary new service, it was simply extending an older one. 34 in a sense wireless telegraphy was not the best for what marconi wanted >> it sent waves in all directions and he wanted point to point >> transmitted messages were public, he wanted private marconi worked as tech revisionist. >>> borrowed from the scientific work of others >>> tech work shaped by his marketplace idea :: ship co, navies, newspapers >>>" transmission over great distances" Like entrepreneurs before and since, he had to make people believe they needed his invention, not just for special occasions, but on a regular basis. Convincing them would be that much more difficult if only one person at a time could transmit or receive. Marconi had to allay the doubts and misgivings of potential buyers of wireless by significantly extending the distance of transmission and by devising a method of tuning. trial and error scientific vs inventor/entrepreneur the problem tunning english patent of 7777 >> 1890 ::: tuning dial : achieved selective reception >>> based on modification on Lodge's system of syntonic wireless 40 Fessenden, De Forest, and Stone each in his own way sought to push wireless beyond this framework. While Marconi considered wireless telegraphy over great distances to be his final product, the Americans gradually came to regard wireless as a necessary steppingstone to their eventual goal: transmitting the human voice without wires. To do this, they rejected Marconi's reliance on intermittent, highly damped waves and instead devised apparatus that would transmit and receive continuous waves. 41 The process of inventing was portrayed one way in the press, but it was evolving in very different ways within institutions. Men wanting to work as inventors were torn between the compelling if unrealistic image of the autonomous inventor-hero and the very real but less glamorous institutionalization of inventing in the corporate sector. Journalistic renditions of inventor-heroes such as Edison and Marconi suggested that with persistence, patience, and hard work, any technically talented young man could achieve fame and fortune. The newspapers emphasized that the highly individualistic man could, through inventing, establish his own intellectual and financial independence. >>>>>>>>>>romantic discourse and the inventor >>> capitalism desire , individualism >> american hero >>> technological imagination reality >>> corporations and inventions >> organized process of inventionthe "invention factory" Invention increasingly occurred within a large corporation's laboratory. Edison's own work contributed to constricting the range of opportunities: historians agree that Edison's most revolutionary and far-reaching invention was not the light bulb or the phonograph; it was the organized process of inventionthe "invention factory"-as embodied in the industrial research lab. Menlo Park, which Edison established in 1876, was the prototype. >>>The research LAB model >>> featured in corporation :: industrial research lab Ironically, America's archetypal independent inventor designed a communal and hierarchical system of inventing which in many ways would be antagonistic to the next generation of freelance tinkerers. >>adopted by GE and other industries individuals working in an institutional setting worked for some, not for others >> the loner was actually not very into this model >>>institutions provide finnancial AND technical rresoruces, prestige, security, >>> NEEDS All three men worked in research labs sometime in their careers, and all were deeply ambivalent about their own relationship to the institutional setting. They wanted their inventions to be their own, they wanted to set their own technical agenda, and they wanted to break out of the anonymous middle tiers of the corporate, engineering hierarchy. Yet they all required the technical and financial resources institutions provided. Each man, as he entered the field of wireless telegraphy, carried within him these contradictory needs, needs shaped by individual biography and by the larger cultural milieu. *REGINALD FESSENDEN canadian rich kid becomes a scholar >> access to journals in universities worked with Edison in Edison Machine Works in NYC formation of General Electric in 1982 >>> fusion of Edicson company and Thomson-Houston >>> FEsseden leaves the company works in other companies, travels to England ::: establishes critical intellectual and commercial links after 7 years of working in electrical labs ::: returns to academics ::: Professor of EI at Purdue ::: tech resources :::Moves to U of Pitsburg 1899 :: 33 years old ::: 7 years in labs, 8 years in universities ::: isolated from the marketplace 44 Both of these environments had been supportive, promoting the ethos of sharing information, and providing the reassurance that his work was valued and his knowledge expanding. While each setting was attuned to its own practical considerations, both settings valued the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge. These positions had brought Fessenden progressively more prestige and autonomy, which fanned his confidence and enthusiasm. marketplace > selling to the public, to the industry, to finnancial backers :: interst in results 45 is knowledge of and work in mathematics, chemistry, and electrical engineering, and specifically in dynamos, gave him a decided technical advantage over Marconi and any other competitors. Unfortunately, he thought this knowledge was all he needed to ensure success. Fessenden knew well the realms of theory and experimentation, and he had successfully integrated them intellectually and professionally. He was about to apply that accumulated knowledge, and the fresh perspective it brought, to wireless telegraphy. But the same experience that brought such distinction to his experimental work had ill prepared him for the role of entrepreneur. In 1900, Fessenden was approached by the U.S. Weather Bureau to experiment with wireless telegraphy on behalf of the Department of Agriculture. >>>resources Fessenden was the first inventor to emphasize the importance of striving for the generation and detection of continuous waves. >>> speech and music >>>nurtured his goal : continuous wave transmission (different to Marconi's damped waves, intermittent transmission naive letter to GE in 1900 >>> collaborationL 100 000 cycle alternator 47 Confident of the correctness of his vision, and drawing on a rich and diverse background, Fessenden quickly conceived of additional technical alternatives to Marconi's system. 48 Unfortunately for Fessenden, the bureaucratic niche he thought would provide him with both autonomy and security eventually expected him to sacrifice the former to preserve the latter. Because Fessenden was unwilling to make this sacrifice, early government support of wireless telegraphy experimentation was, as we shall see, short-lived. ***Lee De Forest The myth of the inventor-hero, with its suggestions of environmental mastery, autonomy, agnosticism, and, of course, fame and fortune, firmly gripped the boy's imagination. Edison, whom he learned about through newspapers and magazines, became his idol, the man he most wanted to emulate. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, Edison was cast as a wizard who held seances with nature's most mysterious forces. Thus, for De Forest, Edison embodied the materialism he craved and the spirituality he could not yet escape. 49 it was through his inventions, whatever they might be, that he hoped to gain the trinity comprising the American dream: fame, fortune, and love. wanted to be a celebrity coming from the south, rural alabama. although was born in iowa It is fitting that such a man, excluded from a culture of which he desperately wanted to be a part, and more obsessed with money and fame than with knowledge, would be the inventor who was most responsible for transforming wireless telegraphy into radio. through his applications of wireless, especially after 1906, he, more than any other figure in the radio community, pioneered in using wireless for broadcasting entertainment to the American public. >>> focused on reception Fessenden, prompted De Forest to continue looking for a reliable, sensitive, and distinctive receiver. His breakthrough was the receiver he called the audion, the forerunner of the vacuum tube. *John Stone Stone At the same time that Marconi was working out his system of tuning in England, an American with little previous practical experience in wireless was also tackling the interference problem. Stone was a mathematician who studied at Columbia and the Johns Hopkins University in the late 1880s. In 1890, Stone went to work in the experimental department of the American Bell Telephone Laboratory in Boston. At Bell, Stone learned the fundamentals of telephone engineering and began exploring the phenomenon of resonance in electrical circuits. stones comes up to a solution to tuning stone com 53 Fessenden linked wireless to work previously done in electrical power transmission and chemistry, and Stone linked wireless to telephony. They were motivated by intellectual ambition and engineering pride. Although by 1899 each man wanted more time to experiment, more technical autonomy, and professional recognition, neither man was driven primarily by a desire to become a media hero. De Forest's motivation was different. Gripped by the overriding desire for personal celebrity, De Forest hoped to use inventing to attain widespread public acclaim. Unlike Fessenden and Stone, he did not have his own technological or conceptual alternative which scientific ambition compelled him to refine. His initial technical work was the least original of the work done by the three inventors. Yet precisely because De Forest was so susceptible to the myth of the inventor-hero, and personally felt the connections between wireless telegraphy and individual aspirations, he would soon become the inventor most responsible for transforming wireless telegraphy into radio broadcasting. While Fessenden, De Forest, and Stone began to feel their way into the wireless business, and started questioning the technical and conceptual foundations on which Marconi's system rested, Marconi continued to concentrate on extending the range of his apparatus. Having patented his method of tuning and begun his work on improved reception, Marconi began considering sites in England and North America for highpower wireless stations. His goal: to establish a regular, commercial, transatlantic wireless service. **marconi continues with his experiments discovers curvature of the earth does not impede transmission of the waves >> 1901 >>> yacht races :: MArconi Vs De Forest covering the event with their inventions >>> failure, interferences marconi needed a victory in the journalistic arena >> seducing the popular press >>> newspaper headlines october 1901 :: marconi transmit transmits the letter S transatlanticly :: from Cornwall to Newfoundland : SIGNALING ACROSS THE atlantic, the ocean >> conquist of nature "In the public mind, Marconi and wireless telegraphy are one; he is the creator." >> from Carl Snyder, "Wireless Telegrahy and Signor Marconi's Triumph," Review of Reviews 25 (Feb 1902). marconi's goal ::: establishing a worldwide monopoly of wireless telegraphy marconi >>> ignored the American technological challenge >>> Fesseden, Stone researching the continuous tuned waves and De Forest hunger of celebrity :: sought to design an apparatus that would render Marconi's obsolete. ******************** CH3 THE VISIONS AND BUSINESS REALITIES OF THE INVENTORS 1899-19045 competition in three arenas : technological, corporate, journalistic >>> success and relevance marconi :: devised the beginnings of a corporate structure that would protect and promote his determined entrepreneurial spirit :: his vision >>> imagined a corporate structure : worldwide network. :: entrepreneural spirit >> competitive and exclusionary policies the 3 americans wanted to compete with marconi. why? -personal ambition -technical competitiveness -individual aspirations were reinforced by the economic climate in America at the turn of the century ::: financial boom rags-to-riches stories in the newspapers >> all americans could participate of the boom celebration of the americans who took entreprenurial risks get-rich-quick fever :: explosion in the American stock market :: merger movement "Corporate consolidation, triggered by the desire to reuce comptition, and made possible by NEw JErseus incorporation act of 1889, began to unite such firms into large antional companies with national reputations." 62 selling securites to the public : posibilited the expansion panic of 1893 middle class customers entered the marked buying stocks revolution in the corporate ownership >> and the press 2 actors in the wall street drama narrated by the presss: Captains of the industrya nd the everyday person JP Morgan lengend napoleons of finance >> financial heores making fast and lots of profits >>> tycoons putting together the right merger american ambivalence toward the concentration of wealth businessmen heroes rag-to-riches stories in the press>> americans wanted to emulate the bull market >> feauture of the economic enviorment 1899-1902 >>> marconi, fessednden, de forest, stone >>> each formed his own wireless co in the usa >> competition in building corporeate structures and articulating corporate strategies > define power and market, long term goals new business in the age of mergers and monopoly ***************************************** LECTURE # 1 subjectivity of the media entrepreneur >> made itself into a brand biography >> agency and individuals why some persons become influecial ? >> cultural context, class, race, context role of the navy >>> opportunity for the goverment to take control of the media spsycobiography style >> "Empire of the Air" aggressive self-promoters RCA personal information availble >>> corporate archives :: departmental memos, 3rd person exposition >>> more like a novel >> realist novel does not theorize the contradictions, tensions , shaping the story >> the contradicitons are lost in the personal biographies of this guys the loosers the outcome is radio at the end centralized and institutionalized >>> the broadcast became the cultural thing, the social institution for radio broadcast model of using the technology >> won, and radio became the model national security >> foreigners >> marconi national identity story, engaging drama ********************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>POST marconi, romantic imagination, british empire, foreigner seems like a collective effort at the end motivated by the romanticism of electricity and the inventor hero >>> ideology >>> sensibility >>> passion science as an ideology press discourse > individual biographies : family, ethnicity, class humanizing the technology :: an interesting way of presenting the inventions focusing in individual needs and sensibilities anecdotes system >>> radio as a system :: assembly collective effort at the end of this individuals convergence of objectives, goals >> science, communication, capitalism, >>. each individual introduce an refinement capitalist society it was not just about becoming a media hero the motivation for intellectual ambition and engineering pride was also present inventor motivations capitalism, sensibility, aesthetics, ideology, discourse, imagination, culture transatlantic imagination :: building the network of communications conquer the earth >>>marconigrama or marconi >>> global imagination I was wondering way the name of marconi became associated to the sending of telegrams. Now I understand that it was constantly beign quoted in the popular press. Its repetition, like a sort of Madona, or Maradona, became part of the popular imagination. popular press and the hero, the man, the inventor, the one >> drama, suspense a romantic history of tech journalistic arena >> seducing the popular press >>> newspaper headlines popular imagination :: globalization :: seduction of becoming a hero of the world >> transatlantic capitalism >> dominating the market the hero, the individual, the monopoly >>. marconi as sort of bill gates, steve jobs -entrepreneural spirit being a millionare get-rich-quick fever marconi and the press >> how to play a celebrity american dream : land of dreames...... the american experience