Communications: An International History of the Formative Years (review)

Russell Burns has written several volumes in the Institution of Electrical Engineers history series on television and on British television pioneers (Alan Blumlein and John Baird). It is therefore not surprising that his history of communications emphasizes television and British contributions to communications electronics. He covers all of communications from 500 BCE to the 1940s, but the first 2300 years are covered in the first twenty-five pages. Chapter 2 covers semaphore signaling—especially the semaphore system of Claude Chappe. Chapters 3 through 21 cover the rise of electric/ electronic communications. A penultimate chapter looks ahead, and a final chapter attempts to make sense of the rise of electronic communications. Of the nineteen middle chapters, eight cover wireless (radio) developments, six cover television developments, three cover telegraphy, one covers telephony, and one covers optical communications.

Burns writes a particular kind of internalist history. He covers the individuals and institutions in significant detail, but does not necessarily cover the devices themselves in much detail. What is most impressive is his attempt to trace the development of the technologies in a way that assigns appropriate credit to each of the players based on their actual contributions. As any reader of this journal is aware, Morse did not "invent" the telegraph, Bell did not "invent" the telephone, nor did Marconi "invent" radio. Many individuals invented these technologies and contributed to their "reduction to practice." Burns provides sufficient material to make clear what each individual did—and why it might be legitimate to give more credit to certain individuals who made these technologies commercially useful. This is particularly true in his analysis of the relative contributions of Lodge, Righi, Jackson, and Marconi. His emphasis is occasionally suspect, but he provides a very broad overview of all the institutions and individuals that brought these technologies into useful, cost-effective practice.

While Burns provides some data on growth, diffusion, and costs/revenues, he provides very little discussion of the effects of these technologies on society—on programming, advertising, regulation, and other impacts. Similarly, there is an overemphasis on television development rather than telephony. High-definition television (400+ lines) is presented as the climax of electronic communications development.

For an American audience, Burns seems to concentrate too much on Europeans, especially Englishmen. But this conclusion may simply be a consequence of the reviewer's bias rather than Burns's. It is difficult to find actual errors, and this is a pleasant surprise because many other histories of (tele)communications are filled with errors—especially technical mistakes. There is a useful mix of primary and secondary sources, and Burns seems to have mastered much of the literature.

Communications: An International History of the Formative Years should be compared with Anton A. Hurdeman's Worldwide History of Telecommunications (2003) and George P. Oslin's The Story of Telecommunications (1992). Hurdeman seems to have significantly more errors, but his coverage seems less idiosyncratic. More accurately, it reflects this reviewer's prejudice toward communications transport technologies (microwave, coaxial cable, satellite, fiber optics) and carries the story through to the present. Oslin's book is the most amusing and the most contextual of the three. It also has by far the greatest number of errors—perhaps bloopers is more appropriate. Oslin does not understand communications technologies but he is entertaining and informative about personalities. My favorite history of telecommunications is Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting by Christopher Sterling and John Kittros (2003), which covers programming, regulatory issues, and technology (in that order), as well as other topics such as stations, networks, advertising, and audience. Unfortunately, that book is only about broadcasting—a subset of telecommunications—and is overlong, more than 700 pages. Until the perfect, accurate, contextual history of telecommunications is written (in 400 pages), students of the field will have to choose among the different approaches summarized above. Among these choices, Burns's book may be the best.