1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910821528603321

Autore

Marvin Carolyn

Titolo

When old technologies were new : thinking about electric communication in the late nineteenth century / / Carolyn Marvin

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Oxford University Press, 1988

ISBN

0-19-987876-5

0-19-756018-0

1-280-52479-0

9786610524792

0-19-802138-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (269p. ) : [14]p of plates, ill., facsims., port

Collana

Oxford scholarship online

Disciplina

621.38

Soggetti

Telecommunication - History - 19th century

Electrical engineering - History - 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 1988.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliography: p. 237-265 and index.

Nota di contenuto

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Inventing the Expert Technological Literacy as Social Currency -- 2. Community and Class Order Progress Close to Home -- 3. Locating the Body in Electrical Space and Time Competing Authorities -- 4. Dazzling the Multitude Original Media Spectacles -- 5. Annihilating Space, Time, and Difference Experiments in Cultural Homogenization -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- E -- F -- H -- I -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- S -- T -- U -- W -- Illustrations.

Sommario/riassunto

In the history of electronic communication, the last quarter of the 19th century holds a special place, for it was during this period that the telephone, phonograph, electric light, wireless, & cinema were all invented. In 'When old Technologies Were New', Carolyn Marvin explores how two of these new inventions - the telephone & the electric light - were publicly envisioned at the end of the 19th century, as seen in specialized engineering journals & popular media. Marvin pays particular attention to the telephone, describing how it disrupted established social relations, unsettling customary ways of dividing the private person & family from the more public setting of the community.