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Britain and the Telecommunications Revolution

Module description

There is no doubt that modern life would be unthinkable without telecommunications. For many telecommunications captures many of the hopes and fears of civilisation. By exploring the history of telecommunications from the early 1800s to the 1930s, this module shows that these hopes and fears are hardly unprecedented, and that historical analyses of past engagements with telecommunication and other technologies furnish important critical skills for thinking about our technologised world.

This module is primarily a social, cultural, economic and political history of telecommunication and does not explore or assess the detailed technical aspects of telecommunication.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module explores the ways that the invention and development of telecommunications technologies (the electric telegraph, telephony and wireless) depended fundamentally on a mosaic of economic, social, cultural and political contexts. Through analysis of a range of primary sources (including government reports, cartoons, literary texts, and diaries) and a critical study of the secondary literature, students will be able to assess the extent to which telecommunications has been shaped by such factors as laissez-faire economics, international politics, military conflict, the growth of the periodical press and railways, and new relationships between work and gender.

The extraordinary growth of telegraphic networks overland, undersea and through the ether means that this module, despite its Anglo-centric title, has a transnational focus. It uses the case of telecommunications to address wider issues in the history of technology such as technological determinism, models of technological change, and the relationship between gender and technology.

This module will appeal to all students with interests in Victorian culture, nineteenth and twentieth century politics, and the history of science and technology.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate a detailed knowledge and understanding of the major themes in the development telecommunications in Britain and other countries from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and the ability to relate these to broader historical contexts
• 2. Make a close specialist evaluation of key aspects of the history of telecommunications, developed through independent study and seminar work
• 3. Critically evaluate the historiography of technology

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Formulate appropriate questions relating to a body of source material and utilise that material to answer these questions
• 5. With minimum guidance, develop and sustain historical arguments in a variety of literary forms, using appropriate terminology
• 6. Display a command of comparative perspectives
• 7. Analyse at a close and sophisticated level original sources and assess their reliability as historical evidence
• 8. Evaluate critically the reasoning of discourses current in the period under study

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 9. Combine independent, autonomous study with the ability to work collaboratively
• 10. Set tasks independently and solve problems, formulating appropriate questions and marshalling relevant evidence to answer them
• 11. With minimum guidance, digest, select and synthesise evidence and arguments to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Introduction to historiography of technology and telecommunications
• Theorising technology and history
• Workshop of the world
• Communication and travel
• Tools of empire
• Gender, technology and telecommunications work
• Race, technology and telecommunications work
• Controlling networks
• Telecommunications and the First World War
• Birth and development of radio broadcasting
• Social shaping of telecommunications systems

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Benjmain, R. (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.  Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Bijker, W., T. Hughes and T. Pinch (eds) (2012). The Social Construction of Technological Systems.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Dusek, V. (2006), The Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Edgerton, D. (2008), The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. London: Profile Books
• Hewitt, M. (ed.) (2012). The Victorian World.  London: Routledge.
• Hilmes, M. (2011). Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting.  New York: Routledge.
• Hochfelder, D. (2012). The Telegraph in America 1832-1920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Kieve, J. (1973), The Electric Telegraph: A Social and Economic History. Newton Abbott: David and Charles
• Nye, D. (2006), Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
• Headrick, D. (1991), The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and Global Politics, 1851-1945.  New York: Oxford University Press
• Marsden, B. and Smith, C. (2005), Engineering Empires: A Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth Century Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan
• Marvin, C. (1988), When Old Technologies were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press Standage, T. (1999) The Victorian Internet (London, 1999)
• Wajcman, J. (1991). Feminism Confronts Technology.  Cambridge: Polity.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11316
• Talis Reading List
• http://atlantic-cable.com
• http://distantwriting.co.uk
• http://www.porthcurno.org.uk/page.php?id=216

Key words search

Technology, telecommunications, history, Britain, globalisation, imperialism, nineteenth century, twentieth century