Inventing the Communications Revolution in Post-War Britain
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Information and Control: Inventing the Communications Revolution in Post-War Britain Jacob William Ward UCL PhD History of Science and Technology 1 I, Jacob William Ward, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis undertakes the first history of the post-war British telephone system, and addresses it through the lens of both actors’ and analysts’ emphases on the importance of ‘information’ and ‘control’. I explore both through a range of chapters on organisational history, laboratories, telephone exchanges, transmission technologies, futurology, transatlantic communications, and privatisation. The ideal of an ‘information network’ or an ‘information age’ is present to varying extents in all these chapters, as are deployments of different forms of control. The most pervasive, and controversial, form of control throughout this history is computer control, but I show that other forms of control, including environmental, spatial, and temporal, are all also important. I make three arguments: first, that the technological characteristics of the telephone system meant that its liberalisation and privatisation were much more ambiguous for competition and monopoly than expected; second, that information has been more important to the telephone system as an ideal to strive for, rather than the telephone system’s contribution to creating an apparent information age; third, that control is a more useful concept than information for analysing the history of the telephone system, but more work is needed to study the discursive significance of ‘control’ itself. 3 Acknowledgements There are many people to whom I owe thanks for making this thesis possible, and here I can only name some of them. For those who aren’t named, all I can say is: if you remember my name and recognise my project, thank you for listening and talking. My first thanks must go to my supervisors: Tilly Blyth from the Science Museum, and Jon Agar from UCL. I am particularly grateful to Jon for also providing so many opportunities for me to teach, present, and publish my research. I have been fortunate to be a collaborative doctoral award candidate between the Science Museum and UCL on a project on Post Office and British Telecom research, and my fellow CDA candidates from this project, Rachel Boon and Alice Haigh, have been fantastic companions to have along this path. From UCL’s Department of Science and Technology Studies, I have benefited at one point or another from the advice and support over the past few years of Joe Cain, Chiara Ambrosio, Brian Balmer, Carina Fearnley, Phyllis Illari, Frank James, Tiago Mata, Carole Reeves, Jack Stilgoe, and Simon Werrett. Lori Coletti Campbell and Susan Walsh have both also been extraordinarily helpful with various funding, employment, and organisational tasks. I have also enjoyed a welcoming and supportive graduate student environment, and owe particular thanks to Elizabeth Jones, for passing on the History of Science Reading Group, which I greatly enjoyed chairing; Alex Mankoo, who has been a great friend and conference partner; Oliver Marsh, for organising the Work-in-Progress seminars; and Erika Jones, for her advice on the AHRC international placement scheme. I have also been lucky to enjoy another institutional home in the Science Museum’s Research and Public History Department. From the Science Museum, Tim Boon and John Liffen have both made time to talk through the past, present, and future of my research. Bergit Arends, Adam Boal, Alison Hess and Laurie Michel-Hutteau have also all helped greatly along the way. Finally, my fellow Science Museum scholars have been great friends to have, and I particularly want to thank Stuart Butler, for all his advice and for The Bree Louise British History group, and Caitlín Doherty, for setting up the Museums and Society Reading Group together, and for being a great friend in Washington D.C. 4 I have been very fortunate to have had access to BT Archives throughout my PhD, and wish to thank all the staff there who made that possible, particularly David Hay and James Elder, both of whom have been tremendously helpful. I have used many archives throughout my research, and want to thank their staff here too: the British Postal Museum and Archive, the National Archives, the Bank of England Archives, the National Museum of American History Archives Center, the National Air and Space Museum Archives Center, and the George Washington University Special Collections. I spent four months of my PhD living in Washington D.C. on an AHRC-funded fellowship at the National Museum of American History’s Lemelson Center. Mary and Thomas Edsall were wonderful landlords. Eric Hintz was a great fellowship adviser, and everyone else at the Lemelson Center was incredibly welcoming and supportive. Bernard Finn and Hal Wallace, also at the National Museum of American History, kindly made time to talk with me about my research. Across the National Mall, I was also very fortunate to make new friends and acquaintances at the National Air and Space Museum: Teasel Muir-Harmony has been a great friend and helped me find accommodation in Washington D.C., and Martin Collins and Paul Ceruzzi both provided advice on my research. Finally, I had the opportunity to present my research at Cornell University’s Science and Technology Studies Department whilst I was in the USA, and so I want to thank Annie Tomlinson and Alana Staiti for organising that, particularly Alana, who also hosted me during my visit to Ithaca. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my family, particularly its newest member: Louisa, whom I married in July 2016 and could not imagine life without. Thank you. 5 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 8 2 Critical Review of Literature ................................................................................... 24 3 The Telephone Business .......................................................................................... 42 4 The Door to Tomorrow? .......................................................................................... 73 5 The Universal Machine .......................................................................................... 110 6 The Information Highway ..................................................................................... 151 7 The Machine Starts ................................................................................................ 180 8 The Single World System ...................................................................................... 215 9 The London Ideology ............................................................................................ 245 10 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 269 Bibliography.................................................................................................................. 285 6 List of Additional Material Figures 2.1 ‘Progress’: the Kensington Computer Centre, 1965 2.2 Telephone demand, 1957-1983 2.3 Post Office central structure, pre-corporatisation 2.4 Post Office central headquarters structure, post-corporatisation 2.5 Post Office telecommunications headquarters structure, post-corporatisation 2.6 Automatic local exchanges in the UK, 1957-1981 2.7 Telephone system capital expenditure, 1970-1984 2.8 British Telecom central structure after separation 3.1 Maps of Dollis Hill in 1914 and 1936 4.1 The Post Office works service organisation 5.1 The British microwave radio-relay network, 1964 5.2 The Post Office Tower, front cover of Eagle and Swift 5.3 The Post Office Tower cut-away illustration, Eagle and Swift 5.4 ‘Progress’: the Birmingham Radio Tower 6.1 The relationship between management and modelling 6.2 ‘Competition and diversity are ideas of the future’ 6.3 The Business Planning and Strategy Department’s logo 7.1 The sea could make a ‘meal’ of telephone cables! 7.2 From beyond the sky to beneath the seas 7.3 ‘Progress’: Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station 7.4 Interference between Goonhilly and French microwave relay stations 7.5 ‘The Communications Explosion’, TIME front cover, 1965 7.6 We’d like to be the first to say hello 8.1 BT Research Engineers’ anti-privatisation badge 8.2 The power behind the button Tables 6.1 Major delegates at BT’s Long Range Strategy Seminar, November 1980 7 1 Introduction Subjects and Methods On October 31st, 1967, James Merriman, the Engineer-in-Chief for the British telephone system, delivered a speech to the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) in which he argued that ‘the concepts of information and control are fundamental to any telecommunications system’.1 These concepts have both become prominent over the twentieth century, in popular and scholarly accounts of an ‘information age’, ‘information society’, and ‘information revolution’, widespread applications and ownership of ‘information (and communication) technology’, wartime emphases on ‘command and control’ and ‘control systems’, the disciplinary emergence of ‘control engineering’ and ‘control theory’, and scholarly accounts of a ‘control revolution’ or a ‘control society’. And yet, as Merriman points out, these concepts have also been linked as ‘twin concepts’: for example, Information and Control was the name given to a cybernetics and information theory