The Telegraphic Revolution: Speed, Space and Time in the Nineteenth Century*

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the impact of the ‘communications revolution’ upon experiences of time and space during the nineteenth century. Focusing upon the first three decades of telegraphic communication, it unpacks the assumptions underlying linear narratives of ‘acceleration’ and ‘time-space compression’ to understand the roots of Germany’s fraught relationship to modernity. In doing so, it highlights the importance of the changes which took place between the 1848 revolutions and the early years of the Kaiserreich and which laid the foundations for the peculiarities of the Wilhelmine Era. During this period, it argues, the perceived impact of telegraphic communication, the ‘expansion’ or ‘contraction’ of space and time, varied from one person and place to another, reflecting the technology’s progressive and uneven expansion across Germany. Access to new networks of communication was dependent upon, and in turn influenced, the changing status of individuals, towns and the countryside experiencing the forces of industrialization, market capitalism and globalization. Speed, space and time, as a result, became a measure of the divisions emerging in modern Germany.