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Media Technology and Society MEDIA TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY Media Technology and Society offers a comprehensive account of the history of communications technologies, from the telegraph to the Internet. Winston argues that the development of new media, from the telephone to computers, satellite, camcorders and CD-ROM, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten ‘law’ by which new technologies are introduced into society. Winston’s fascinating account challenges the concept of a ‘revolution’ in communications technology by highlighting the long histories of such developments. The fax was introduced in 1847. The idea of television was patented in 1884. Digitalisation was demonstrated in 1938. Even the concept of the ‘web’ dates back to 1945. Winston examines why some prototypes are abandoned, and why many ‘inventions’ are created simultaneously by innovators unaware of each other’s existence, and shows how new industries develop around these inventions, providing media products for a mass audience. Challenging the popular myth of a present-day ‘Information Revolution’, Media Technology and Society is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change. Brian Winston is Head of the School of Communication, Design and Media at the University of Westminster. He has been Dean of the College of Communications at the Pennsylvania State University, Chair of Cinema Studies at New York University and Founding Research Director of the Glasgow University Media Group. His books include Claiming the Real (1995). As a television professional, he has worked on World in Action and has an Emmy for documentary script-writing. MEDIA TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY A HISTORY: FROM THE TELEGRAPH TO THE INTERNET BrianWinston London and New York First published 1998 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 1998 Brian Winston All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Winston, Brian. Media technology & society: a history/Brian Winston. p. cm. Rev. ed. of: Misunderstanding media. 1986. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. 1. Mass media—Technological innovations—History. 2. Communication—Technological innovations—History. 3. Communication—Social aspects. 4. Mass media—Social aspects. I. Winston, Brian. Misunderstanding media. II. Title. P96. T42W49 1998 302.23–dc21 97–34781 ISBN 0-203-02437-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-16063-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-14229-6 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-14230-X (pbk) For my wife and children—my ‘angels of history’ CONTENTS List of figures xi Acknowledgements xiii Introduction: A storm from paradise—technological innovation, diffusion and suppression 1 The Information Revolution as hyperbole 1 Modelling change 3 ‘Invention’ 9 PART I Propagating sound at considerable distances 1 The telegraph 19 Scientific competence to ideation: static electrical telegraphs 19 Prototypes, necessity and ‘invention’: dynamic electrical telegraphs 22 Suppression and diffusion: owning the telegraph 26 2 Before the speaking telephone 30 Scientific competence: the telephone 30 Ideation: speech transmitted by electricity 36 Prototypes: electrical speaking telephones before 1877 43 3 The capture of sound 51 Supervening necessity: the telephone and the office 51 VII CONTENTS ‘Invention’: creating the telephone to order 54 Suppression and diffusion: the telephone after 1900 57 ‘Inventing’ a spin-off: the record 60 PART II The vital spark and fugitive pictures 4 Wireless and radio 67 Scientific competence to ideation: from spark to wireless 67 Necessity, diffusion and suppression: ironclads and telegrams 70 ‘Invention’: from wireless telegraphy to radio 74 Ideation and necessity: the idea of broadcasting 75 Suppression and diffusion: valves/tubes, FM and cartels 78 Living with radio 84 5 Mechanically scanned television 88 Scientific competence: light and electricity 88 Ideation: faxes and ‘fugitive pictures’ 91 Prototypes: mechanical scanning 94 6 Electronically scanned television 100 Invention I: electronic scanning 100 Invention II: alternative electronic scanning 107 Necessity and suppression: entertainment 111 Suppressing television: 1935–48 114 Suppressing television: 1948 to the mid-1950s 119 7 Television spin-offs and redundancies 126 Spin-offs and redundancies: VCRs, CDs et al. 126 Redundancy: 1125-line analogue television 140 PART III Inventions for casting up sums very pretty 8 Mechanising calculation 147 Scientific competence I: ‘thinking machines’ 147 VIII CONTENTS Scientific competence II: Babbage 155 Scientific competence III: calculators—mechanical to electrical 158 Prototypes: electro-mechanical calculators 162 9 The first computers 166 Electronic prototypes I: ENIAC and ‘the firing table crisis’ 166 Electronic prototypes II: Colossus vs. Enigma 170 Ideation: ‘the store’ 174 Supervening social necessity: the H-Bomb 178 ‘Invention’: incunabula 181 10 Suppressing the main frames 189 No buyers 189 No languages 199 No babies 203 11 The integrated circuit 206 Suppression (cont.): ignoring solid state electronics 206 Scientific competence: cat’s whiskers to transistor 207 Transistors vs. valves 216 Ideation and prototype: the integrated circuit 220 ‘Invention’: the microprocessor 224 12 The coming of the microcomputer 227 Suppression revisited: the computer industry 227 Diffusion and spin-offs: PC production 232 PART IV The intricate web of trails, this grand system 13 The beginnings of networks 243 The first wired network 243 The telephone network 248 14 Networks and recording technologies 261 Broadcasting networks 261 IX CONTENTS Digression: broadcasting networks and recording technologies 264 Pre-satellite international radio links 271 International wired links 273 15 Communications satellites 276 Scientific competence and ideation: the communications satellites 276 Prototypes: low and medium orbits 280 Social necessity and invention: the geostationary satellite 282 Suppression: the international network 288 16 The satellite era 295 Domestic satellites 295 Direct broadcast satellites 298 17 Cable television 305 The return of the wire: cable television 305 The impact of domestic satellites 311 The impact on broadcast television 315 18 The Internet 321 Prototypes and ideation: computer networks 321 From necessity to diffusion: ARPANET to Internet 328 Conclusion: The pile of debris—from the Boulevard des Capucins to the Leningradsky Prospect 337 Notes 343 References 351 Index 361 X FIGURES 1 Building the model: the social sphere 3 2 Building the model: ideation 4 3 Building the model: prototypes 6 4 Building the model: supervening social necessity 7 5 Building the model: ‘invention’ 10 6 Building the model: suppression of radical potential 12 7 Building the model: diffusion 14 8 Telegraphy 20 9 Telephony 37 10 Wireless telegraphy/radio 68 11 Television 106 12 Computing 204 13 Solid state devices 208 14 Moving holograms 342 XI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is a reworking and updating of material originally published in 1986 (Misunderstanding Media). I then essayed a polemic against the rhetoric of the Information Revolution grounded in a history, necessarily both synthetic and revisionist, of the central technologies of that supposed event. This current work is the other way round in that it again offers that history, mainly of electronic communications from telegraphy to holography, but now does so centrally with the anti-technicist polemic in the supporting role. From the 1970s on I was increasingly aware of a gap between the rhetoric of runaway technological change and the reality of my professional life as a media worker and teacher. Working with film and teaching film-making when videotape was supposed to have wiped out that technology spurred a central thought that change was occurring more slowly than was (and is) commonly believed. In synthesising the histories of these technologies I have obviously relied extensively on the work of others but my understanding owes more than can be adequately footnoted to colleagues and friends at New York University a decade and more ago—especially William Boddy, Michelle Hilmes, Aaron Nmugwen, Mitchell Moss and Martin Elton. Svein Bergum and Jimmy Weaver, members of my seminar group on technology and ideology at that time, were especially supportive as were others both at NYU and elsewhere including Daniel Zwanziger, Bernard Abramson, Robert Horwitz, Herb Schiller, Janet Staeger, Michael Wreen, Steve Scheuer and Nick Hart-Williams. The Interactive Telecommunications Programme at NYU was a crucial forum, especially for testing the validity of early versions of the model proposed in the Introduction and applied throughout this book. My two commuter friends on the AMTRACK Hudson Valley line, Wayne Barden and Frederick Houston, helped me refine the legal points I wanted to make. (I am still grateful to ‘Mo’ Fink and the other AMTRACK conductors for making that period of commuting
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