Paul J. Miranti
Papers presented since 2019
2020 Charlotte, North Carolina
"Fourier’s Integral and the Development of Carrier Telephone at the Bell System: A Chapter in the History of Industrial Mathematics, 1918-1948"Paul J. Miranti, Rutgers Business School, Phillip Bradford, University of Connecticut, Stamford
Panel session: Managing Technological Innovation
Abstract: This study analyzes how the application of advanced mathematics helped Bell System management to develop successfully telephone multiplexing both to arrest a declining trend in operating network performance and also to counter the threat of technological obsolescence to the firm’s heavy investment in wire transmission plant because of the advent of radio telecommunications. Influenced largely by the leadership of George A. Campbell, Bell developed in 1918, a method for superimposing highly variable voice waves on steadier transmission currents to create a composite electrical envelope. Through a process of electrical filtering and modulation these signals could be transmitted and delivered in high frequency carrier waves ( > 30,000 Hertz) generated by powerful vacuum tubes. This approach derived from the analogous application of an integral originally developed by French mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Baron Fourier to measure heat transfer through solid objects in 1822. Although this development increased network efficiency, its high cost of operation and the later development of coaxial cable in the 1930s gradually limited its scope of applicability. The experience, however, provides useful insight into the evolutionary circumstances that encouraging the development of a new technology and later led to its decline because of the extension of the boundaries of technological understanding.
2022 Mexico City
"From Rate Regulation to Financial Control: Accounting and Public Policy at the Interstate Commerce Commission, 1887-1933"Betul Acikgoz Makey, Bozok University, Dan Palmon, Rutgers University, Paul J. Miranti, Rutgers University
Panel session: Tracking Management: Railroads in North America
Abstract: This paper focuses on the application by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) of accounting to achieve two public policy goals relating to the railroad industry from 1887 to 1933. The first involved using accounting to implement the federal agency’s explicit mandate of assuring rate equity and an implicit goal of reducing rail industry informational asymmetries. Subsequently in the 1920s, the ICC used accounting rate of return data to reduce securities speculation, facilitate regional rail consolidation, and govern industry finance. This system ceased when its approaches proved ineffective in addressing the dislocations experienced during the 1930s Great Depression.