Private Telegraphy
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Private telegraphy: The path from private wires to subscriber lines in Victorian Britain Jean-François Fava-Verde Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science September 2016 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement © 2016 The University of Leeds and Jean-François Fava-Verde The right of Jean-François Fava-Verde to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. iii Acknowledgements In the first place, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Graeme Gooday, for his guidance and encouragement during the production of this thesis. I enjoyed our frank discussions and I am especially grateful to him for sharing his insight into the history of technology. My sincere thanks also to my examiners, Dr Jonathan Topham and Dr Ben Marsden, for their constructive comments on my thesis. It has also been a privilege to work alongside the knowledgeable and friendly members of the telecommunications reading group of the department, especially Dr Michael Kay, Dr John Moyle, and Dr Lee Macdonald, who broadened my vision and provided insights into various themes such as private telephony, telegraphic lines testing or the effect of solar disturbance on telegraphic lines. I have had also the pleasure of presenting some of the material in this thesis on various occasions during postgraduate conferences in Leeds and London, and would like to thank all of those who attended and provided valuable feedback. All historians owe much to archivists, and I am especially thankful to David Hay, Head of BT Archives and his team, Dave Shawer, Scott Barlow, Keith Lovell and Victoria Rea for supporting my research. At the Institution of Engineering and Technology Archives, Ann Locker, Archivist, and John Cable, Assistant Archivist were also very helpful in helping me going through William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone collections. A special thank you goes to John Liffen, Curator of Communications at the London Science Museum for opening the doors of Blythe House and providing relevant papers. This is not to forget all the other archivists to whom I am also indebted, including those at the iv British Postal Museum and Archive, the Bank of England, De La Rue plc, and the Intellectual Property Office. I also wish to extend my sincere thanks to my wife, Amanda, for her support during long weekends and evenings of research, and particularly for the weekend away in Cornwall she thought was a break, only to be dragged to the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum. Finally, I am very grateful to Michael Kay for having proofread the entire thesis. Any errors in the text remain my own. v Abstract In this thesis, I investigate private telegraphy from its rise in the late 1830s to the advent of exchange telephony in the early 1880s. In contrast to public telegraphy where telegrams were transmitted over a shared network infrastructure, private telegraphy was a direct, more immediate form of user-to-user communication delivered over private wires. My objective is to redress a historiographical distortion in the understanding of the Victorian telegraph created by the conflation of the concept of telegraph with telegram, and by the prominence given to the nationalisation of the telegraph industry in 1870 in the discourse of historians like Jeffrey Kieve or Charles Perry, thus obscuring the critical role played by private telegraphy in the history of communication. To begin with, I expose the dichotomy between public and private telegraphy by demonstrating the similarities and rivalry between telegrams and letters. I contend that this rivalry was an important factor behind the nationalisation. The extent to which private telegraphy was distinct from public telegraphy is demonstrated through a comprehensive history of private wires and the first domestic telegraph instruments. I track the development of private wires, from their inception at the hands of users of the telegraph to their assimilation by telephony, and show their versatility for diverse uses. I also reveal how telegraphic intercommunication systems – the so-called Umschalters – were reconfigured to become the Post Office’s first generation of telephone exchanges in the early 1880s. From this novel perspective, I counter the received scholarly view that the Post Office obstructed the expansion of telephony to protect the Crown’s stake in telegraphy. I claim instead that the Post Office exploited the installed vi base of Umschalters and private wires, by then referred to as subscriber lines, to become an active participant in the nascent telephone industry alongside the private companies, thus accelerating the take-up of exchange telephony. vii Content Acknowledgements .............................................................................................iii Abstract ............................................................................................................... v Content............................................................................................................... vii List of Figures ....................................................................................................... xi Abbreviations and acronyms .............................................................................. xiii Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................... 1 1.1 The received narratives of the Victorian telegraph .................................... 7 1.2 The historiographies of the Victorian telegraph ....................................... 10 1.3 Historiographical distortion and duality paradigm ................................... 22 1.4 Methodology ........................................................................................... 25 1.5 Sources .................................................................................................... 29 1.6 Overview and structure of the thesis ....................................................... 32 1.7 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 37 Chapter 2. Haste! Post haste! ........................................................................ 39 2.1. In the pursuit of speed............................................................................ 42 2.2. Proximity and ubiquity............................................................................ 53 2.3. Simple and affordable............................................................................. 58 2.4. Conclusion .............................................................................................. 67 viii Chapter 3. The rise of public telegraphy ........................................................ 70 3.1. An event of significance .......................................................................... 76 3.2. The public turn ....................................................................................... 86 3.3. Dear telegraph...................................................................................... 102 3.4. The politics of appropriation ................................................................. 109 3.5. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 121 Chapter 4. The origins of private telegraphy ................................................ 125 4.1. A business want for a ubiquitous telegraph .......................................... 130 4.2. The commercialisation of private telegraphy ........................................ 145 4.3. The wide appeal of private telegraphy .................................................. 158 4.4. An international perspective on private telegraphy .............................. 163 4.5. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 169 Chapter 5. The versatility of private telegraphy ........................................... 173 5.1. The purchase of UPTC ........................................................................... 176 5.2. The private wires under the Post Office ................................................ 181 5.3. Special wires for the press and the stock exchanges ............................. 184 5.4. Regulating time with private wires ....................................................... 201 5.5. From observatories to collieries ............................................................ 208 5.6. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 212 Chapter 6. The Assimilation of Private Wires ............................................... 216 ix 6.1. From speaking telegraphs to telephones .............................................. 218 6.2. The politics behind the Umschalter ...................................................... 233 6.3. The dual use of private wires ................................................................ 244 6.4. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 253 Chapter 7. Conclusions ...............................................................................