Abstract

"From Telegraphs to Telephones: Tracing the Socio-technical Transition in Canadian Telecommunications from 1846-1980"

David Foord, University of New Brunswick (David.Foord@unb.ca)

This paper examines how Canada’s political, economic and social circumstances and dynamics shaped the transition from the telegraph to telephone. Instead of explaining the transition using either political economy or social construction of technology interpretations, we use a socio-technical transitions approach to show how technology suppliers, public policy, telegraph industry, telephone industry, other adjacent industries and users interacted in a dynamic process that led to the shift from telegraphs to telephones. In doing so, we offer a novel research methodology that combines archival-based, narrative history methods with social science-based analysis of the multiple-dimensions of socio-technical system change. The paper contributes to the transition literature by examining a novel history within a lesser studied system (i.e., telecommunications) and transition context (i.e., Canada). It shows the genesis and growth of both telegraph and telephone industries, revealing how they emerged and co-evolved through a process of partnership in addition to competition and conflict. An important element in this political economy and transition narrative was the ongoing, mutually beneficial interaction between firms in the telegraph regime and telephone niche. Although the similarity in technology, infrastructure and customers in the two configurations might have provided the basis for conflict, there was instead collaborative and symbiotic interactions. The telegraph regime’s pioneering development of policy and regulation, including on rights of pole and wire installation, helped lay the foundation for and accelerate the takeoff and diffusion of the telephone niche. Telephone network operators benefitted in leasing wires from telegraph firms. Moreover, as telephone network operators moved from small market segments in the 1920s to mainstream markets and exponential growth in the 1940s, telegraph companies did not fight back to inhibit telephone diffusion, but rather deepened their reliance on revenue from the telephone configuration to compensate for decreases in the message delivery business, thus benefitting both industries.