Radio Engineers, the Federal Radio Commission, and the Social Shaping of Broadcast Technology: Creating “Radio Paradise”

Abstract

Radio Engineers, the Federal Radio Commission, and the Social Shaping of Broadcast Technology: Creating 'Radio Paradise” HUGH RICHARD SLOTTEN As consultants, as moulders of the policies of great in­ dustrial organizations, as expert witnesses and legislative advisers, the radio engineers, with their group con­ sciousness, can be of service as great and important as with their individual ingenuity in the laboratories. [Assistant General Counsel, Federal Radio Com­ mission]1 In recent years, historians of technology have become increasingly interested in exploring the interaction between the technical and in­ strumental aspects of technology and the social, political, and eco­ nomic components of cultural development. Instead of assuming rigid dichotomies between technology and society or technology and science, influential scholars have called for more studies informed by a “seamless web” or interactive model, “in which the technical, scien­ tific, economic, political, social, etcetera, [become] overlapping, soft categories.”2 One area of research that has attracted the attention of Dr. Slotten is visiting assistant professor in the Department of History at George Mason University. He wishes to thank the late Hugh Aitken, Bill Aspray, Paul Boyer, Loren Butler, Susan Douglas, Colleen Dunlavy, Andrew Goldstein, Jon Harkness, Robert McChesney, Milton Mueller, Rik Nebeker, Ronald Numbers, Eric Schatzberg, Emily Thompson, and especially John Servos and the Technology and Culture referees for their comments on earlier versions of the article. ’Paul M. Segal, “The Radio Engineer and the Law,” Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 18 (June 1930): 1043. 2Thomas P. Hughes, “The Seamless Web: Technology, Science, Etcetera, Etcetera,” Social Studies ofScience 16 (1982): 281-92, esp. 287. Also see the introductory comments in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology!Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); and in Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1987). Although© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040- 165X/95/3604-0004$01.00 950 The Social Shaping ofBroadcast Technology 951 historians of technology is the interaction between technology and public policy. This historical interest is partly linked to the growing connection between these two areas of concern in contemporary soci­ ety. On the one hand, technology has become more of a public activ­ ity; engineers, for example, must be more attentive to the social, political, and environmental implications of their work. On the other hand, the resolution of traditional public policy questions depends more and more on the advice of technical experts. Together these two developments have resulted in state and federal governments playing a major role in promoting and regulating technological inno­ vations. Especially in the case of the regulation of technological devel­ opment, a complex relationship exists between technical and scientific problem solving and political and social decision making.* 3 in many cases it is important to analyze the differences between science and technology or scientihc and engineering knowledge and practice, this study focuses on the interre­ lationships, which have become especially significant in the 20th century. It is not, of course, assumed that technology is simply applied science. For a recent historiographic discussion of the relationship between science and technology that also emphasizes an “interactive model,” see Edwin T. Layton, Jr., “Through the Looking Glass; or, News from Lake Mirror Image,” in In Context: History and the History of Technology—Essays in Honor ofMelvin Kranzberg, ed. Stephen H. Cutdiffe and Robert C. Post (Bethlehem, Pa„ 1988), pp. 29-52. 3The literature dealing with the history of technology and public policy, especially government involvement in technological development, is extensive. Recent studies that discuss the promotion and regulation by the government of one field, electrical technology, include: Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore, 1983); Hugh G. J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technol­ ogy and American Radio, 1900-1932 (Princeton, N.J., 1985); Nicholas H. Steneck, The Microwave Debate (Cambridge, Mass., 1985); Joan Lisa Bromberg, The Laser in America, 1950—1970 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991); Susan J. Douglas, Inventing American Broadcast­ ing, 1899—1922 (Baltimore, 1987); Donald Mackenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology ofNuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, Mass., 1990...