From Cabling the Atlantic to Wiring the World: A Review Essay on the 150th Anniversary of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable of 1866

Abstract

The year 2016 witnesses the 150th anniversary of laying the first successful transatlantic telegraph cables. This review essay offers a critical rereading of existing scholarship while simultaneously suggesting new perspectives for research. Telegraphy = globalization, the history of wiring the world commencing with the Atlantic cable of 1866 seems to suggest. At the same time, this essay argues, this equation should make scholars uneasy and cautious of a possible technological determinism retracing its steps back into the middle of scholarly debates on globalization. More attention needs to be paid to whose globalization we are talking about, what the globalization of politics, markets, and media means in connection to communication, and whether the cables really started something radically new. 150 years after laying the "first" Atlantic cable, there is still room for research. New spaces, theories, and methodologies, as well as alternate user groups including women and subalterns, offer avenues to test established scholarship on global communications.

William Siemens: An Engineer and Industrialist in Germany and England

“…An important discussion among the brothers was how Siemens should approach global telegraphy (Müller, 2016). Siemens & Halske had started by building continental telegraph lines, and now other entrepreneurs were planning to link the continents.…”

Oligopolies of the past? Habermas, Bourdieu, and conceptual approaches to news agencies

“…Meanwhile, examinations of technology in communications have concentrated on the telegraph, the first electric medium that appeared to eliminate time and space; these include works by Bonea (2016), Headrick (1991), Müller (2016b), Müller and Tworek (2015), Starosielski (2015), Wenzlhuemer (2007, 2012), and Winseck and Pike (2007). The last 30 years have seen an increasing number of studies of submarine cables, particularly in the lead-up to the 150th anniversary of the laying of the first successful transatlantic submarine cable in 1866 (Müller, 2016a). Some histories were partly inspired by a desire to correct the erroneous assertion that submarine cables were a ‘Victorian Internet’ (Standage, 1998).…”