Telegraph Services Research Articles

George Kennan and the American-Russian Relationship, 1865-1924.

George Kennan s career as a specialist on Russian affairs began in 1865, with his first journey to the Russian empire. A twenty-year-old telegraphic engineer at the time, he was a member of the Russian-American Telegraph Expedition, a now virtually unknown but nevertheless remarkable nineteenth-century adventure story. That bold undertaking would have established telegraph service between the United States and Russia by submarine cable across the Bering Strait, an event unfortunately upstaged by the successful laying of the Atlantic Cable. Its directors subsequently abandoned the project. But for Kennan the impact of the endeavor proved both formative and lasting; his work in northeastern Siberia as a member of the expedition had so piqued his interest in Russia that over half a century later it still was not slaked. By the time of his death in 1924, his various investigations of Russian subjects had resulted in numerous publications and lectures that had established his reputation as the leading American expert on Russia of his era. The major concern of Frederick F. Travis s book is the role of George Kennan in shaping American-Russian relations in the important half century before the Russian Revolution and its immediate aftermath. This study first establishes that Kennan began his career as an ardent Russophile, then carefully traces his shift to hostility following his investigation of the Siberian exile system in 1885-86, and explains in some detail his subsequent influence on public opinion. Kennan s later work revealed a Russia of almost unrelieved political and economic distress in the tsarist empire, and of a noble, almost hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned opposition, contributing significantly to the unpreparedness with which America faced the Revolution of 1917. Kennan s analysis of the October Revolution and its immediate aftermath served only to harden American attitudes toward the presumed evils of Bolshevism. The picture of George Kennan that emerges from this study is the fullest to appear in any language, according him a standing in the history of American-Russian relations unequaled by any official participant.

Journal of Urban History. Vol. 14, no. 1: The City and Technology ed. by Mark H. Rose, Joel A. Tarr

1070 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE New in Los Angeles and the Automobile is the assertion that policy toward the auto was “political” in the same sense as was transit policy because it “involved extensive political maneuvering” (p. 172). New too, to many readers, will be a useful distinction between decentrali­ zation and dispersion. On the whole, this book is valuable chiefly because it places Los Angeles in context. The core of the book, however, is the resuscitated thesis that the auto’s role in urban change was “democratic.” Finding that, in 1939, auto ownership in Los Angeles was fairly evenly distributed geographically (while 500,000 still rode streetcars daily), Bottles seems satisfied that this undefined “democracy” was served in the accommodation of the private car. The question, of course, is whether payment of road building costs by motorists means that the car has covered the full social and environmental costs of its effect on the American city. Paul Barrett Dr. Barrett is associate professor of history at Illinois Institute of Technology. His publications include The Automobile and Urban Transit (Philadelphia, 1983). He is currently at work on a history of airport planning policy and its effects on urban and suburban change. Journal of Urban History. Vol. 14, no. 1: The City and Technology. Edited by Mark H. Rose and Joel A. Tarr. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1987. Pp. 139; illustrations, notes. Paper. In 1979, the editor of the firstJournal of Urban History issue on The City and Technology, Joel Tarr, articulated a new agenda for urban historians—one that would examine the “intersection between urban processes and the forces of technological change” (5:275). Tarr urged that historians begin not only to examine previously ignored technol­ ogies like streetlighting but also to probe more deeply into issues of technological innovation, design choice, decision making, behavioral reaction to technological change, and institutional and regulatory response. Less than ten years later, a new special issue on the subject has been published, edited by Mark Rose and Joel Tarr. They take well-deserved pride in pointing out how far work in this area has come. Not only is the study of such formerly arcane subjects as streetlighting, sewerage, and telegraph services an accepted part of the field of urban history, it is a mainstream part of the history of technology. The second special issue consists of four articles. The first, by Mark J. Bouman, concerns streetlighting in cities. On the basis of an examination of the development of streetlighting in cities in the United States, England, and Germany, Bouman argues that cultural conditions peculiar to modern cities created the context in which TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1071 streetlighting arose. These conditions included such things as night­ time economic activity, leisured elites, and a social order regulated by manners as well as police. The second article, by Tarr, with Thomas Finholt and David Goodman, concerns the development of intracity telegraph services. The authors describe the development of early private-line telegraph networks as well as their effect on business activity and their use by police and fire departments in 19th-century cities. Mary Corbin Sies surveys the process by which an elite group of architects, real estate developers, housing reformers, domestic scien­ tists, and others involved in community planning began to debate and experiment with the design ideas that ultimately became known as the “suburban ideal.” Sies argues that her group of professionalmanagerial -level urban developers, planners, and reformers shared a value system that not only dictated that suburbs be designed as refuges from the factories, saloons, overcrowding, and filth of inner cities, but also demanded that experts be consulted on every step of the design process to assure that this goal be incorporated into the final product. The last article, by Paul Barrett, examines the history of airport planning, location, and design in the United States between 1926 and 1952. Barrett argues that a public policy tradition that treated airports purely as transportation facilities and not as an integral part of city planning as a whole accounts for present problematic patterns of airport location and the lack of effective planning for land use around airports. The essays testify to the progress...

De Blériot à Dassault: Histoire de l’Industrie aéronautique en France 1900–1950 by Emmanuel Chadeau

1072 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE As the essays reveal, historians have spent far more time studying the multifaceted cultural and political causes behind technological devel­ opment than the social and cultural consequences. Some attention to effects is evident in these essays—Tarr and his collaborators allude to how the telegraph changed business activity; Barrett, to the problems caused by faulty airport location. Little, however, is said ofcultural and social responses, although much could be. How did streetlighting in ac­ tuality affect nightlife? Did the advent ofprivate- line telegraph services affect business culture as well as business practice? How did life in the elite suburbs designed by Sies’s “professional managerial stratum” com­ munity developers differ from life in equally elite suburbs not so de­ signed? Such issues should be of interest to historians of the city as well as those of technology and culture. The almost total lack of interconnection among the essays reflects a larger problem with the growing literature on the history of urban technology as a whole. As yet, no one has written a synthetic history of the development of urban technology in American cities over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. An overarching theoretical framework is needed to identify common patterns of evolution as well as to examine the common social, economic, and cultural effects of different technologies across cities and time. Analysis is also needed to explain the significance of variations in the development of the same technologies in different cities and times. Historians face an enor­ mous task in forging their disparate pieces of research on diverse kinds of public utilities and other urban technologies into a coherent whole, but at some point they must begin to tackle the task. In light of these problems, I think it is a bit premature to suggest, as Rose does in his introductory essay, that the field has developed to a point where all that is needed is to “fill gaps rather than attempting to articulate or defend research choices” (p. 4). In sum, this very valuable issue of the Journal of Urban History tells us a great deal not only about the history of streetlighting, telegraph services, suburban design, and airport location and design but also about the present state of the field as a part of the history of the American city and the history of technology. Christine Rosen Dr. Rosen teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. De Blériot à Dassault: Histoire de l’industrie aéronautique en France 1900—1950. By Emmanuel Chadeau. Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1987. Pp. 552; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliogra­ phy, index. Fr 180.00 (paper). In studies on the history of aviation in Western Europe, Americans have available to them in English much on Great Britain, less on TECHNOLOGY AND CUL TURE Book Reviews 1073 Germany, and very little on France. The dearth of material in English on French aviation reflects the fact that there have been relatively few books on the subject in France, and works on aviation there tend to concentrate, as they do in the United States and elsewhere, on its heroic and military aspects. Emmanuel Chadeau’s substantial and excellent study of the French aviation industry from 1900 to 1950 has done much to fill this large gap of'knowledge about French aviation. Chadeau’s work examines the industry in its national context, showing how it has reflected the strengths and weaknesses of France and how French political developments in particular affected it. He divides his history into three parts, the first a period of the industry’s prosperity and remarkable achievement, from 1900 to 1918, culmi­ nating in the “golden age” of French aviation just before and during World War I. The second era, from 1917 to 1937, was a time of rationalization, concentration, restructuring, and ultimately of de­ cline into the political and economic abyss of the mid-1930s; the final period chronicles the course of development through nationalization and World War II to a resurgence in the 1950s. Within his discussion of the entire industry, Chadeau analyzes the rise and fall of various important firms such as Breguet, Gnome and Rhone, Potez, Bloch, Caudron, and Hispano...

Carrières féminines et carrières masculines dans l'administration des Postes et Télégraphes à la fin du XIXe siècle

Les années 1880-1900 ont marqué un tournant dans l'histoire de la fonction publique. Les effectifs sont en forte progression, les épurations moins nombreuses n'affectent plus que les postes dirigeants, des femmes sont désormais embauchées dans les bureaux, les syndicats se développent et la vie administrative se modernise grâce à l'utilisation de la machine à écrire ou du téléphone. L'armée des moyens et petits fonctionnaires devient alors une réalité. Les P. et T. ont largement contribué à ce gonflement numérique. Sur les 510 000 fonctionnaires recensés en 1901, 17% sont employés par cette administration. Th. Zeldin cite le chiffre de 50 000 agents des postes recrutés dans la période 1850-1900.La croissance des effectifs postaux et télégraphiques recouvre plusieurs réalités. Elle est le reflet de l'importance grandissante que l'on accorde alors à la communication. Si en effet l'administration des Postes et Télégraphes a un rôle économique et financier important, elle a également un rôle politique et culturel. Politique, car l'État cherche à maîtriser l'information en exerçant un contrôle sur la nature des publications distribuées. Culturel, car le développement du trafic postal est la marque des progrès de l'instruction et de la diffusion de l'écrit sur l'ensemble du territoire. Elle traduit aussi les évolutions sociales qui marquent cette fin de siècle.

Feminism and the sexual division of labour. Female labour in the Norwegian telegraph service around the turn of the century

(1985). Feminism and the sexual division of labour. Female labour in the Norwegian telegraph service around the turn of the century. Scandinavian Journal of History: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 143-154.

The Present State of Telephone Development in Japan

The Japanese government began providing public telegraph and telephone services in the latter half of the 19th century. After years of service and system development, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT) was established in August 1952, and has been the provider of domestic public telecommunications services ever since.

The Shadow of Hiroshima: Two Diaries

Although no longer recent, two little books, slim enough to be slipped into a pocket, deserve to be read—or reread, as the case may be—by all physicians. Both are diaries, both are written by physicians, and both concern Hiroshima in 1945. Both are timeless. The first, Hiroshima Diary , 1 covers two months in the life of Michihiko Hachiya, MD, from Aug 6, 1945, to Sept 30, 1945. The second, Encounter With Disaster , 2 picks up a little before the first ends and covers just under three months in the life of Averill Liebow, MD, from Sept 18, 1945, to Dec 10, 1945. At the time the accounts were written, Dr Hachiya was a civilian physician in charge of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital, a 125-bed hospital with a large outpatient population, which served workers in the postal, telegraph, and telephone services. Dr Liebow was a lieutenant colonel in the US Army

International standards for telecommunications

As soon as telegraph and telephone services extended beyond local or national boundaries the need for coordination became imperative. It is not surprising that the International Telecommunications Union, the forum for world-wide cooperation, is the oldest of the inter-governmental agencies which now form the specialized agencies of the United Nations. Through the various levels at which it operates, from the plenipotentiary conference to the study groups and working parties of the consultative committees, the I.T.U. exercises a profound influence on the development and evolution of all branches of telecommunications. Increasingly, the distinction between international and national services is diminishing and all services are coming under the direct control of individual customers and often of their machines. Intervention by specially trained operators has to be exceptional. Simplification and standardization of terminals and procedure is essential. Other factors are operating outside the formal arena of the I.T.U. and influence the progress of standards. Manufacturing industry that looks to world markets is concerned that the purchasing specifications that define its markets should have basic compatibility; this concern is complemented by the purchasing authorities in countries without indigenous industry and who have to buy on world markets. Regional standardization may proceed faster and more deeply than world-wide standardization; this is evident in Europe where the Conference of European Telecommunications Administrations provides a natural forum and has undertaken a programme of ‘harmonization’ activity in cooperation with the Commission of the European Economic Community. Maintaining coherence between regional and world standardization will be an intricate but necessary task for the participants.

Present State and Future of Telecommunications in Turkey

The public telecommunication network of Turkey is briefly discussed in this paper. The existing telephone, telegraph, data, and other related services are summarized, and future trends in some of these services are indicated. These trends suggest that capital investments on the telecommunication services must be at least doubled in order that the standards in the country compete with those of the world averages. Finally, some of the research in communications is cited.

Higher Civil Servants in the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs: Some Demographic and Career Characteristics, 1905-1916

One of those organs of tsarist government that apparently broadened its responsibilities and competencies during the nineteenth century was the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). At the turn of the century the Ministry's authority extended over political and civil police, local agrarian affairs, licensing of physicians and veterinarians, gathering of statistical data for the empire (including censuses), postal and telegraphic services, press licensing and censorship, civil engineering, as well as other, equally diverse, areas. The publicly announced rationale for this vast range of competencies was that these functions all were directly related to the public welfare. As a government document written for Western consumption in the 1890s put it, the Ministry was “allotted the very extensive task of caring for the universal welfare of the people, the peace, quiet, and good order of the whole Empire.”

Aspects of Tokugawa Bureaucracy and Modernization

There is perhaps in all history no parallel case to the swiftness and effectiveness of Japanese modernization in the few years following the Meiji Restoration of 1868. A few examples of it will suffice to indicate its extent and thoroughness. The feudal lords (daimyõ) returned their fiefs to the state in 1869, and the new prefectures were created in 1871. At the end of 1869 a telegraphic service began between Tokyo and Yokohama. In 1870 smallpox vaccination was made compulsory throughout the country. In 1871 there was new coinage based on the gold system, and the old currencies were abolished. By the following year a railway line existed from Yokohama to Shimbashi in Tokyo, and a government‐operated spinning mill was set up in Tomioka in Gumma prefecture. A national system of primary education was established in these years, and the government not only planned but also intervened with investment in industrial developments, especially in heavy industry. Of quite fundamental importance were the missions which the government sent to Europe and the United States of America to study and report on various governmental, legal, and military systems. In all this there was obviously much central planning, central control and capable administration. There was also, and had to be, a fairly compliant and literate populace. Less obviously, one may assume that there were certain ‘growing points’ in the traditional values and social structure for the modernizing processes to develop from; evidence for that assumption will be offered below.

Gestion publique et gestion privée des services publics : l'exemple de la restructuration des entreprises publiques économiques en Belgique

The role of state services in a market economy has been lately at the care of an intellectual and political debate in Belgium as well as in most European countries. State companies as the Post Office, the Railways and the Telegraph Service have to face an ever more fierce competition and have to be efficient and profitable.The way to deal with privatisation bas however been much less clearcut in Belgium than in other countries such as the United Kingdom or France. A law bas been passed recently (on 21th March 1991) and the monopoly position of the Transport and Telecommunications state companies has been alleviated and their autonomy increased as a result. A distinction has been made between, on the one hand, the commercial activities for which they have to compete with the private sector and, on the other hand, the activities of public interest which are subject to certain limitations laid down in a management contract ( "contrat de gestion ") .

International Communications: What Shape to Come?

Overseas communications to and from the Unted States were a hundred years old in the i960s. The first cable capable of carrying telegraph signals across the Atlantic was laid in i866. The slow but steady growth in overseas communications which characterized much of the intervening time dramatically accelerated after World War II. Since then, the public has witnessed the installation of large capacity cables and satellites, providing vastly expanded communications facilities and services at ever-declining charges. Telephone service is now available by direct circuits to eighty overseas countries or territories and via such points to 125 additional points. A telephone subscriber in this country can reach approximately 215 million telephones, over ninety-six per cent of the world total.' Operator dialing is already in effect to many countries, and direct customer dialing will be available next year. Telegraph service is available to even more countries. Over 250 countries or territories throughout the world may be reached by telegrams sent from the United States. Total annual revenues from this international communications business for the year I967 were $3II.5 million, exceeding I966 revenues by sixteen per cent.2 During I967 there were I2.3 million calls between the United States mainland and points overseas, up twenty-three per cent from the previous year. There were five times as many overseas calls from the United States in i967 as there were just ten years ago.3 While message telegram revenues were only up slightly, consistent with the domestic pattern, teleprinter exchange revenues of the overseas telegraph carriers advanced sharply.4 The net income of the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), which provides facilities to the telephone and telegraph carriers, was up forty-seven per cent in I968 over the previous year.5 This ever-expanding service to the public has been accompanied by muchimproved quality and lower rates. For example, when service was first inaugurated from New York to London in 1927, the rate for message telephone calls was $75 for

The Australian Telecommunications Network

The Australian Telecommunications Network, which is operated by the Government through the Postmaster-General's Department, is among the world's more advanced systems. Telephone, telegraph, and television services are provided to virtually all settled areas of the vast Australian continent. In very sparsely settled areas, outpost radio telephone services provide for essential communication. The manner in which the Australian network is being extended and modernized to meet the demands of the future is described. Reference is made to Australia's overseas telecommunications services and to the measures taken in the national system design to ensure compatibility with the world system.

Telecommunications in Sweden

The main tasks of the Swedish Telecommunications Administration are the telephone, telegraph, and telex services. The staff of the Administration includes about 40 000 persons. About 31/2 million telephones are serviced, Each year 250 000 new telephones are installed. Data transmission is a rapidly expanding new branch of activity. Switching equipment is of the crossbar type, or based on the 500-line switch. Switching equipment of stored-program-controlled semielectronic type is under development. For long distance traffic, coaxial cables and microwave links are used. The Swedish Telecommunications Administration has both resources for technical development and factories for manufacturing telephone sets and switching equipment.

Sir William Brooke O'Shaughnessy--the foundations of fluid therapy and the Indian Telegraph Service.

IN September, 1831, Asiatic cholera erupted in England. Faced with a mounting death rate and lacking effective therapy, the medical profession grasped at an array of empirical remedies ranging from...

The effect of multipath distortion on the choice of operating frequencies for high-frequency communication circuits

Harmful multipath distortion on high-frequency facsimile services and telegraphic services operating at high speeds occurs when the received signal is composed of two or more components arriving by different modes over the same great-circle path with comparable intensities, but having travel times which differ by an amount equal to an appreciable fraction of the duration of a signal element. The dependence of multipath distortion on the relationship of the operating frequency to the MUF is discussed and a new term, the multipath reduction factor (MRF), is introduced which permits calculation in terms of the MUF of the lowest frequency which can be used to provide a specified measure of protection against multipath distortion. The MRF has a marked path-length dependence and is calculated as a function of path length for representative values of the other parameters involved by making use of an ionospheric model. It is then shown how the MRF can be used in connection with world-wide MUF prediction material to determine the minimum number of frequencies which must be assigned to a high-frequency communication service of continuous availability operating at high speed. Some comparisons with observations are discussed, and finally conclusions are drawn concerning manner of operation and choice of operating frequencies to reduce or to eliminate harmful multipath distortion.

International radio organizations—some aspects of their work

A brief historical outline is given of the growth of communications from the inland postal service to international telegraph, telephone and radio services. The inauguration of the International Telecommunications Union and its technical consultative committees is described, and details are given of the present work of the International Radio Consultative Committee (C.C.I.R.). A corresponding review is given of the activities of the International Scientific Radio Union (U.R.S.I.) the object of which is to foster international co-operation in fundamental research and provide the scientific basis on which operational communications and other applications of radio are developed and maintained.

The Future of Marine Electronics Captain

This paper was presented by Captain Wylie at the Full Assembly meeting of the Radio Technical Commission for Marine Services in New York on 26 October 1956. The subject is dealt with under three headings: Communication, Navigation and Anti-collision.To the landsman of the western world, telecommunication is as unremarkable a part of his life as his toothbrush. To the seaman in the old tradition, it may occasionally be anathema, but to the modern mariner that feeling of isolation which came when the last mail had been collected and the shore telephone line disconnected, while sometimes a blessed relief, is becoming an anachronism. On shore, the use of the telegraph service has receded very greatly as a result of the increasing efficiency and availability of the telephone. More and more people discover and insist upon the advantage of personal contact by speech. At sea there is little difference in the desire, but a great deal in its gratification, due to lack of facilities and to failure to provide an integrated system which will serve the ship from mid-ocean to her anchor berth in port.

Development of transcontinental communications in Canada

THERE are three major communication agencies in Canada. The Trans-Canada Telephone System furnishes long-distance telephone service to the public across Canada and also provides privately leased telephone and telegraph circuits. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company and the Canadian National Railways each furnish commercial telegraph service throughout Canada, and they also provide a number of privately leased circuits, both telephone and telegraph.