Telegraph Company Research Articles

Whither Industrial Democracy? The Federal Government and Organized Labour in the Telegraph Industry during the First World War

The recent historiography of American labour in the First World War pays special attention to the idea of industrial democracy. The federal government, historians argue in various ways, played a major role in defining that term and affecting how trade unionists, employers and all kinds of industrial and political reformers fought over and applied their own definitions of industrial democracy. In this article I look at one case study of wartime federal intervention in labour relations, between the Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America (CTUA) and the Western Union Telegraph Company. During the war both parties were subject to intervention from the National War Labor Board, the main federal arbitration agency, and then, after nationalization of the telegraphs, the federal Telegraph and Telephone Administration. The experience of the CTUA is more or less at odds with recent general accounts of First World War labour. In this article I argue that this experience points towards a change of emphasis regarding federal-style industrial democracy, placing greater stress on its role in leading directly to the non and antiunion industrial policies practised by many employers in the 1920s, in addition to its encouragement of trade union growth in wartime.

“That goes for Sweeny”

It is the perseverating Jamie who employs the expression “That goes for Sweeny” (as O'Neill spells the name) when he wants to dismiss a remark he has just directed at Edmund in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. This expression appears to have originated in the horse-racing and betting world, though its usage later expanded. Such is the claim—“A New Slang Phrase and How It Originated”—put forth in the New York Morning Telegraph, a newspaper published for horse-racing followers, on February 12, 1901: “That Goes for Sweeney”The slang of the racetrack is as distinctive as that of the gambling house, the stage, or the city slum, and much of it is unintelligible to the average man about town who thinks he has heard everything and knows everything.A frequent expression of disgust among racing men is “That goes for Sweeney.” Translated it signifies, “I pass it up.” “I don't want any part of it.” Ordinarily it is employed with reference to a bad proposition that does not appeal convincingly to the keen business judgment of the speaker.Sweeney is a quaint little Irishman who does the calling on the Western tracks. Whenever anything particularly shady or dubious in the way of inside information crops up it is unloaded upon Sweeney. The knowing ones reject it with the satirical comment, “That goes for Sweeney.” They don't care for it.But, although he never “gets it right,” unless by mere accident, poor Sweeney is a blithe and light hearted person, with a vein of quaint philosophy and original humor that makes him much liked by the racing people. Some of his own contributions to the slang of the period are weird and wonderful word creations.He takes a cheerful and optimistic view of the future, and is serene in the belief that one of these days some good thing that “goes for Sweeney” will put him on velvet for the rest of his life.1 Use of the expression quickly spread to other part of the sports world, to baseball and boxing, for example.2 An amusing early instance involves boxing and the courts. When Magistrate Herrman held the redoubtable heavyweight champion Jack Johnson “for consideration by the grand jury in $1,000 on the charge of whipping a consumptive negro named Norman Pinder,” he did so after dismissing Johnson's counsel's explanation. The case was “framework,” argued Johnson's lawyer; Pinder “received his injuries by falling downstairs in ‘Baron’ Wilkins's negro resort in West Thirty-fifth Street on the night of the assault.” “Tell it to Sweeney,” countered the judge.3By the end of the decade we find the phrase “that talk goes for Sweeney” employed as the writer states his credentials in “Confessions of a Dope Fiend”: Our greatest moving picture star is a “snow bird”; her name I do not care to mention, and one of our greatest song writers of the day is up against the pipe, and you can take my word for it as a gilt edged bond, for seeing is believing.In the underworld you hear of this stuff: “How do you know” and “who told you,” but that talk goes for Sweeney. I know who and what's what because I handed over the dope myself for I was a messenger boy in the employ of the Postal Telegraph company for five years and I was stationed in New York's famous tenderloin for that period.4 A more widespread use of the expression is suggested by an article in the New York Times in 1920 complaining that visiting Europeans were taking advantage of Americans, in which O'Neill's friend Benjamin De Casseres reminded his readers that “when some one got off a cock-and-bull story in our presence we used to say ‘Tell it to Sweeney,’ or ‘Tell it to the marines.’”5So widely disseminated was the phrase even by 1910, however, that it cropped up as the title of a popular song, the tag line for a local advertisement, and in the slogan for a major newspaper. “Tell It to Sweeney” was sung by Blanche Ring (1877–1961) the vaudeville and Broadway star.6 An enterprising harness supplier named Sweeney in Trenton, New Jersey, repurposed the expression to advertise his wares and expertise. “Use a Sweeney Collar for a sweenied horse,” he advised. “If you have any harness trouble tell it to Sweeney, the leading harness maker, Broad and Market Sts.”7 And it is reported that when Joseph Medill Patterson started the New York Daily News in 1919, he “crafted his paper for New York's common man, whom he dubbed ‘Sweeney.’ The paper's slogan ‘Tell it to Sweeney! The Stuyvesants will understand,’ captured the imagination of both readers and advertisers, and the paper flourished.”8

Informational flow of Customer Service's Channels at brazilian mail and telegraph company

This research analyzes the informational flow of the Customer Service Channels of the Brazilian Post Office and Telegraph Company, Regional Board of Directors of Paraíba, under the perspective of information management, questioning how the information of such flow has influence on the formulation of tactical actions for decision-making. With regard to the objectives, the methodology is classified as descriptive with qualitative approach of the case study type. For data collection, the research used the guided interview and documental analysis categorizing the information according to the content analysis for interpreting them. As result, the research found that every action, in a corporate level, occurs in a standardized manner, inclusive in reference to solution and response proposed to customers. Therefore, it can be concluded that the information flow of the Customer Service Channels, if treated in a systematic manner, is a useful tool for qualitative diagnosis of the offered services so as to identify the client’s need as well as to add value to the company, by improving its image and, finally to the local society.

INFORMATIONAL FLOW OF CUSTOMER SERVICE'S CHANNELS AT BRAZILIAN MAIL AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY

This research analyzes the informational flow of the Customer Service Channels of the Brazilian Post Office and Telegraph Company, Regional Board of Directors of Paraiba, under the perspective of information management, questioning how the information of such flow has influence on the formulation of tactical actions for decision-making. With regard to the objectives, the methodology is classified as descriptive with qualitative approach of the case study type. For data collection, the research used the guided interview and documental analysis categorizing the information according to the content analysis for interpreting them. As result, the research found that every action, in a corporate level, occurs in a standardized manner, inclusive in reference to solution and response proposed to customers. Therefore, it can be concluded that the information flow of the Customer Service Channels, if treated in a systematic manner, is a useful tool for qualitative diagnosis of the offered services so as to identify the client’s need as well as to add value to the company, by improving its image and, finally to the local society.

INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH AT THE EASTERN TELEGRAPH COMPANY, 1872-1929.

By the late nineteenth century the submarine telegraph cable industry, which had blossomed in the 1850s, had reached what historians regard as technological maturity. For a host of commercial, cultural and technical reasons, the industry seems to have become conservative in its attitude towards technological development, which is reflected in the small scale of its staff and facilities for research and development. This paper argues that the attitude of the cable industry towards research and development was less conservative and altogether more complex than historians have suggested. Focusing on the crucial case of the Eastern Telegraph Company, the largest single operator of submarine cables, it shows how the company encouraged inventive activity among outside and in-house electricians and, in 1903, established a small research laboratory where staff and outside scientific advisors pursued new methods of cable signalling and cable designs. The scale of research and development at the Eastern Telegraph Company, however, was small by comparison to that of its nearest competitor, Western Union, and dwarfed by that of large electrical manufacturers. This paper explores the reasons for this comparatively weak provision but also suggests that this was not inappropriate for a service-sector firm.

Reputation and Political Legitimacy: ITT in Chile, 1927–1972

The literature on multinational corporations argues that a foreign firm can legitimize its activities, improve its reputation in a host country, and reduce the risk of hostile actions by the host government (including expropriation) by approaching and incorporating influential members of the domestic elite in its business. By using the concept of obsolescing political legitimacy, we argue that this legitimating strategy can lead to a loss of reputation and eventual illegitimacy when the host country undergoes significant social and institutional changes. When these changes take place, the domestic society can perceive that the multinational benefited from a previous social and institutional order increasingly considered as illegitimate. Under these circumstances, the new order will question the legitimacy of the multinational's operations, increasing the risk of expropriation. We illustrate our hypothesis with the case of the political strategies of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) in Chile in the twentieth century.

Multilingual Broadcasting Policy of the Manchurian Telegraph and Telephone Company

Multilingual Broadcasting Policy of the Manchurian Telegraph and Telephone Company

Looking Forward, Looking Backward: Response

those who happened to glance at the cover of the nAVSA 2012 conference program would have found the 1901 map of the eastern telegraph Company displayed in its full glory (see fig. 1). working in concert with the conference’s theme, “Victorian networks,” the map depicts an interconnected earth with Atlantic civilization, and London especially, at its center. it conjures a particularly modern world— one where people, information, and goods travel at record speed and with remarkable fluidity. the inhabitants of such a networked world looked, we might imagine, relentlessly to the future, hastened by accelerating flows and liberated from old ways. Certainly, the proliferation and intensification in the use of the word “network” during the Victorian era adds linguistic freight to this understanding. instances of the word conjuring a chain or system of interconnected things multiplied in the nineteenth century. taken together, the map and its vocabulary cultivate an understanding of a modernizing nineteenth century that culminates in the fluid, forward motion of people, goods, and ideas. An ephemeral object, the conference program seems destined to be tossed out or filed away. By using it as a starting point, i wish to emphasize the important work performed not only by maps and words, but by conference rubrics, too. A generation of critical studies of cartography has left us with the lesson that maps are historical and social texts that function at the behest of states, empires, trading companies, and telegraph agencies. Maps privilege perspectives and locations, and in so doing, imply processes and narratives. the same can be said, ultimately, for the thematic frameworks employed on a yearly basis by the conveners of nAVSA conferences. while rubrics open and organize, they also occlude and exclude. what sort of conference did the notion of Victorian networks produce? And what sorts of nineteenth-century narratives did it enable? with these questions in mind, i began, some months ago, to assess the vision of the Victorian age on offer at nAVSA 2012. As i

From Mechanical Objectivity to Instrumentalizing Theory: Inventing Radio Ionospheric Sounders

While the discovery of the ionosphere through wireless communications technology in the mid-1920s had built a close connection between atmospheric science and radio, the full-fledged use of radio waves as a geophysical probe did not start until an instrumental development occurred a few years later. This article examines this advance, which centered on the invention of radio sounders of the ionosphere. Like the earlier radio experiments on the ionosphere, the sounders bounced radio waves off the upper atmosphere and inferred its properties from the returns. But the new apparatuses contained valuable innovations. In the 1930s, researchers at American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), Britain's Radio Research Board (RRB), the Technical University of Munich, and the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (NBS) automated data recording with oscilloscopic displays and inscription gadgets. They also devised control mechanisms to synchronize the acquisition of data with the change of transmitting signals. On the one hand, such automation was consistent with Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison's "mechanical objectivity," which minimizes human interference, makes experiments repeatable, and reduces personal equations, most notably perhaps with the Bureau of Standards' automatic single-frequency sounder. On the other hand, however, the automation also embodied mechanically theory-laden experimental procedures—it instrumentalized a theory that underlay the experimental scheme. The British and Americans' sweep-frequency recorder reckoned precisely the mandate of the magneto-ionic theory, the dominant model of radio-wave propagation. The sweep-frequency recorder incorporated the magneto-ionic theory by producing an easy-to-measure critical condition that the theory had predicted.

Graph standardization and management accounting at AT&T during the 1920s

Drawing principally on archival resources, this study examines the standardization of graphical representations of managerial accounting information at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) during the 1920s. This innovation in management practice promoted operational efficiency by reducing the uncertainty associated with internal informational asymmetries that frequently arise in enterprises of great scale, scope and complexity. This change also invigorated management accounting and reduced risk perceptions by providing clearer delineation of important trends and relationships in a dynamic business environment. The innovative practices extended the vision of top management and, thus, strengthened their ability to coordinate and control the enterprise’s business activities. This new form of organizational learning was also adaptive, drawing on well established approaches followed in the firm’s extensive range of scientific and engineering endeavors. It shaped corporate culture in important ways by establishing norms for the accumulation, analysis and application of firm-specific economic information.

A Summary Evaluation of the Antitrust Implications in Helios Towers' Acquisition of Multi-Links

Business combinations in telecommunications market have occurred since 1904 when the first combination between Pioneer Telephone & Telegraph Company, Shawnee’s Long Distance Telephone Company and the North American Telephone & Telegraph Company of Muskogee took place in Oklahoma, America. The merging parties will usually claim efficiencies to justify the combination but nevertheless in the last three decades, national Antitrust authorities have as a matter of practice reviewed such combinations whether they may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. In August 2011, the Department of Justice (DoJ), America’s lead Antitrust enforcement agency successfully instituted a lawsuit permanently injuncting the proposed merger between AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA Inc., two of the nation’s largest Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). On the other side of the Atlantic, in Nigeria, Helios Towers recently acquired Multi-Links. Both companies operate in the Nigerian Telecommunications market.In this article, I summarily evaluate the Antitrust implications of the transaction, if any. I also briefly discuss the “failing company” defence invoked to justify the acquisition of an ailing company and conclude by proposing various measures that would substantially mitigate any potential harm caused by the transaction to competition in the affected markets.

Critical evaluation of ERP implementation on firm performance: a case study of AT&T

Firms have recently faced the twofold challenges of the abrupt deterioration of the global economy and continual rise in customer demands and expectations. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) benefits a firm in cost minimisation and service level enhancement. American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), the largest telecom service provider in the USA, is selected to be studied in this paper. We investigate the critical elements of their ERP implementation process. We also illustrate comprehensive approaches such as Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), Multiple Linear Regression and Intensity Indices to evaluate ERP performance. Findings show that ERP implementation decreases dependence on capital investment, but not for operating expenses. This study also found that AT&T reacted faster than the market average in terms of IT investment, and the Intensity Indices have shed some light on how this trend is derived.

Dr Wildman Whitehouse and his ‘Iron Oscillograph’; Electrical Measurements Relating to the First Transatlantic Cable

Wildman Whitehouse is popularly remembered as the surgeon turned ‘dabbler’ in telegraphy responsible for damaging the first Atlantic telegraph cable in 1858 by use of his high voltage induction coils. He is also known for his disagreement with the electrical theories of William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and being sacked as electrician to the operator of the transatlantic cable, the Atlantic Telegraph Company. Over the past 150 years commentators have marked him down as insignificant, a loose cannon in the annals of telegraphy, a ‘non-engineer’ and certainly a ‘non-scientist’. This paper, after a brief account of his whole career, looks specifically at Whitehouse’s work associated with submarine telegraph cables prior to the laying of the 1858 Atlantic cable. During this period he was making electrical measurements at the manufacturer’s works and also on long underground cables, in order to try to establish the viability of communications along the proposed 2000-mile transatlantic link.By reappraising historical accounts against primary sources and examining hitherto unresearched artefacts held in museums, the paper endeavours to outline Whitehouse’s approach to measurements of telegraph signal pulses using his magneto-electrometer. This was one of his principal measuring instruments, decried by most historians as heavy-duty and sluggish, yet it would appear to have allowed Whitehouse to make extraordinarily sensitive comparative measurements. The results of such work are illustrated in a contemporary diagram preserved by the Science Museum and perhaps indicate that Whitehouse’s achievements in telegraphy may have been more merit-worthy than previously understood.

FAILED TRANSMISSIONS AND BROKEN HEARTS

This paper explores a series of nineteenth century court cases involving the failed delivery of telegraphic ‘death messages.’ In these cases, friends or family members of a deceased or dying person failed to receive a telegram announcing the death or illness, and thus either missed their loved one's funeral or were unable to see them before they died. The intended recipient of the telegram then sued the telegraph company over the emotional suffering they experienced as a result. Those cases that were decided on behalf of the presumably emotionally wronged party offered a complex understanding of the public responsibilities of telecommunications companies. In the view of the courts that made these decisions, these companies were not simply responsible for transmitting messages. They also had an empathetic duty to the feelings of their customers. These court decisions have much to teach media historians about nineteenth century communications law and the emotional implications of new technologies.

Auld Lang Syne [Microwave Surfing

In July 1922, when the information department of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) printed vol. 1, no. 1 of the now-legendary The Bell System Technical Journal (BSTJ) (US$0.50 per copy; US$1.50 per year), the field of electrical communication was still in its infancy.

Saving Time and Annihilating Space: Discourses of Speed in AT&T Advertising, 1909-1929

In the early years of the 20th century, advertisements for the telephone—especially those created for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T)—did far more than sell the public on telephone service. They can be seen as constituting a pedagogy of modernity that was instrumental in shaping modern conceptions of time and space in the social imagination. This essay draws on numerous examples of telephone advertising and illustrates how they deployed representations of time and space in the discursive construction of speed as a product of the telephone. The author argues that the tropes of speed engaged by these advertisements aligned the possibilities afforded by modern technology with the acceleration of capitalism itself.

A Cable to Shrink the Earth

This article discusses how the invention of the telegram revolutionized the communication process in the mid-19th century. On August 15, 1858, Queen Victoria sent a telegram to President Buchanan. It was a joint American and British effort, spearheaded from the American side by an indefatigable financier, Cyrus West Field, and on the British side by a telegraph company. The message of 98 words took sixteen and a half hours to transmit. The cable that carried Victoria’s message was laid in two sections beginning from a rendezvous point in mid-Atlantic. Two converted battleships spliced their cargoes and parted laying cable; the Agamemnon provided by the British government steered east to Ireland, and the American Niagara west to Newfoundland. Before this cable was laid, there was no direct communication between continents. No message could travel faster than the fastest steamships, which required at least 10 days to make the sea voyage between America and Europe. The submarine telegraph cable reduced communication time from days to hours.

Sequencing in telecommunications reform: A review of the Turkish case

This paper reviews the Turkish case of telecommunications reform with reference to the evidence from the sequencing literature. Turkey’s progress is in line with the proper sequencing of reform suggested by the literature. Accordingly, Turkey has pursued a gradualist approach by restructuring its public utility, the Posts, Telegraph and Telephone Company, and creating Turk Telecom in 1994; establishing the sector regulator, the Turkish Telecommunications Authority, in 2000; and liberalising the sector in 2003 before selling 55% of Turk Telecom to Oger Telecom, a private company, in 2005. Although the proper sequencing of reform was implemented, the Turkish telecommunications sector has not been functioning satisfactorily as yet, as indicated in the recent progress report of the European Union about Turkey’s accession and as revealed by the performance indicators analysed in this paper. The prevailing information, incentive and commitment problems require a close cooperation by the government with the regulators so as to ensure and reinforce the autonomy of the Telecommunications Authority and to establish a more transparent decision-making process.

The United Fruit Company and Early Radio Development

When General Electric formed the Radio Corporation of America with Marconi assets in 1919, conflicts over patents prompted a push for cross-licensing agreements with the other large electrical and telephone interests. In addition to RCA, General Electric, AT&T and Westinghouse, a fifth partner in the patents pool was the United Fruit Company whose primary business was banana production. How the fruit company became a player in the American radio cartel and the impact of its radio activities in the tropics are the focus of this article. The evolution of its subsidiary the Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company is also delineated.

Wireless politics

On 12 July 1906, representatives of Marconis Wireless Telegraph Company staged a demonstration of the new medium of wireless telegraphy across Bass Strait, between Point Lonsdale in Victoria and Devonport in Tasmania. A special train was organised from Melbourne for the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, most of the cabinet and members of the young Australian Parliament, who deferred debate that day on important industrial legislation. The event and its aftermath provided a striking illustration of the relationship between politics and communications. Political enthusiasm for the idea of new communications technology ran well ahead of the capacity to make lasting decisions about how it should be deployed. Copyright 2010 Jock Given. No part of this article may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of the publisher.