When Old Technologies Were New

269 pages

English language

Published 1988 by Oxford University Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-19-504468-3
OCLC Number:: 15109205

In the history of electronic communication, the last quarter of the 19th century holds a special place, for it was during this period that the telephone, phonograph, electric light, wireless, and cinema were all invented. In When Old Technologies Were New , Carolyn Marvin explores how two of these new inventions--the telephone and the electric light--were publicly envisioned at the end of the 19th century, as seen in specialized engineering journals and popular media. Marvin pays particular attention to the telephone, describing how it disrupted established social relations, unsettling customary ways of dividing the private person and family from the more public setting of the community. On the lighter side, she describes how people spoke louder when calling long distance, and how they worried about catching contagious diseases over the phone. A particularly powerful chapter deals with telephonic precursors of radio broadcasting--the "Telephone Herald" in New York and the "Telefon …

In the history of electronic communication, the last quarter of the 19th century holds a special place, for it was during this period that the telephone, phonograph, electric light, wireless, and cinema were all invented. In When Old Technologies Were New , Carolyn Marvin explores how two of these new inventions--the telephone and the electric light--were publicly envisioned at the end of the 19th century, as seen in specialized engineering journals and popular media. Marvin pays particular attention to the telephone, describing how it disrupted established social relations, unsettling customary ways of dividing the private person and family from the more public setting of the community. On the lighter side, she describes how people spoke louder when calling long distance, and how they worried about catching contagious diseases over the phone. A particularly powerful chapter deals with telephonic precursors of radio broadcasting--the "Telephone Herald" in New York and the "Telefon Hirmondo" of Hungary--and the conflict between the technological development of broadcasting and the attempt to impose a homogenous, ethnocentric variant of Anglo-Saxon culture on the public. While focusing on the way professionals in the electronics field tried to control the new media, Marvin also illuminates the broader social impact, presenting a wide-ranging, informative, and entertaining account of the early years of electronic media.

4 editions

Ben Waber reviewed When Old Technologies Were New by Carolyn Marvin

An Eye-Opening Triumph

5 stars

This is a timeless classic, revealing how common the narratives of new technologies are and how difficult it is to predict the actual transformative scale of innovations, with people both wildly over and under estimating these effects. The focus here on the late 19th century is particularly insightful, since there's enough distance where we know the outcome of, for example, telephony and electric lighting, but they're still close enough where we experience their effects. People thought, for example, that there would be electric power deliverymen, and didn't appreciate the social effects of telephone access until after much broader adoption. I can only imagine what people reading about 2020s technology in 100 years will think about our current predictions. Highly recommend

Subjects

Telecommunication -- History -- 19th century
Electric engineering -- History -- 19th century

When Old Technologies Were New

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