"Infrastructure and Culture in the Transition from Telegraphs to Telephones in Canada, 1846-1970"

This paper makes contributions to the historiography on telegraphs and telephones and the literature on socio-technical transitions. Within the historiography, there is disagreement about the forces behind fast and slow transitions in large technical systems. John argues that the social construction of technology methodology is the past and we need to reorient to Hughes’ large technical system approach. To illustrate his argument, John finds the fast transition in the US to basic telephone service occurred due to its unique political economy, differing from a slow transition in Canada as a result of its differing political and economic context. While the US transition has been explained with social construction approaches, including an examination of slowness and reversals in rural US telephone usage, the Canadian case is largely unexplored outside Ontario and Quebec, Bell Canada’s territory. To contribute to this historiography, we examine the question of how Canada’s political, economic and social circumstances and dynamics shaped the transition from telegraphs to the telephones. In our social science history, we employ a dual integrity model, taking a Janus perspective in using new archival materials to contribute to the historiographical debate, as well as testing and refining the multiple level perspective theory of socio-technical transitions. We examine government initiatives, public policies and firm-level operations behind the growth of both telegraph and telephone systems in Canada. Our analysis of annual growth in infrastructure (number of poles, wires, telegraph offices and telephones), usage (number of telegrams sent and telephone conversations) and telephone company advertising in Canadian newspapers (for business, social and others uses) supports a political economy explanation of the Canadian transition, as well as showing the influence of telegraph industry infrastructure and market assumptions in the development of telephone networks.