IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2013 - 17

Network Nation continues its theme of political
economics in these two chapters on the commercialization of the telephone, describing how the vagaries of patent law propelled American Bell to build
a long-distance network, while municipal franchise
law prompted frequent telephone switch upgrades in
cities. John pithily observes that for the Bell operating companies, "politics had artifacts" (p. 236). These
chapters are especially interesting for their accounts
of the operating and technical challenges overcome
by the early telephone companies, and of the preferences and protests of early telephone users, who were
mainly businessmen and professionals. In fact, those
early subscribers wielded significant influence via
boycotts, backing rival companies, lobbying for rate
caps, and proposing municipal ownership.
The hero of lively Chapter Eight, and the popularizer of the telephone, is Angus Hibbard, the general
manager of Chicago Telephone at the turn of the century. Early in the chapter, John offers this corrective:
"The popularization of the telephone was not synonymous with the installation of telephones in a majority of the nation's residences...rather, it consisted
of the telephone operating companies' acceptance
of the novel idea that they had an obligation to provide the entire population with some kind of access
to the telephone network" (p. 270). The quintessential
efficiency-focused progressive Era manager Hibbard
dramatically increased the number of telephone users
in Chicago through his innovations. His usage charts
showed that the efficiency of the network depended
primarily on subscribers - so to reduce congestion
(and increase profits), he installed coin-box telephones in public places.
The coin-box telephones proved immensely popular, as did three options that Hibbard introduced in
1900: multiple party lines, neighborhood exchanges,
and - most memorably - pay-as-you-go nickel-inthe-slots. The nickel-in-the-slots were intended for
multiple users and required a coin to complete a connection, but rather than being placed in stores or pharmacies, they were installed in boardinghouses and
apartment buildings.
The experiences of Hibbard's fellow managers in
other cities, namely New York, San Francisco, and
Nashville, complete this chapter. John concludes that
each of them "had an intuitive grasp of the interconnectedness of urban life and made it a cornerstone of

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SprING 2013

their business strategy...Henceforth, the telephone
became second nature not only for business, but also
for the business of everyday life" (pp. 309-310).
The final three chapters address the challenges
to and successes of AT&T during the 1910s, culminating with the perceived failure of the government
takeover of the telephone system during World War
I. Chapter Nine chronicles the campaigns of independent phone companies to supplant the Bell System
around 1907, and their setbacks, including the collapse of US Independent and the rechartering of
Chicago Telephone.
Chapter Ten highlights Theodore Vail as Bell's
charismatic president during 1907 through 1919,
emphasizing his strategies for Bell's growth in the
context of renewed government efforts at regulation
during Woodrow Wilson's presidency. During Vail's
tenure, the public increasingly supported government ownership of the telephone, and in 1918, Wilson
arranged the transfer of the telegraph and telephone
networks to the post Office Department as a wartime
necessity, the subject of Chapter Eleven. John characterizes this transfer as "an abject failure" (p. 371). His
epilogue reflects on the twentieth-century ramifications of that failed experiment in government control,
namely, the ascendancy of the managerial corporation
and the market segmentation of electrical communications, including radio and television.
John's organizing framework of the telegraph and
telephone's evolutionary stages of commercialization, popularization, and naturalization provides a
tidy way to group and read his eleven chapters. However, it also reveals a gap. He defines naturalization
as the process by which "the network was depoliticized through the constant repetition of the seductive
dogma that existing institutional arrangements were
rooted in technology and economics rather than politics and culture" (p. 7). Although John asserts that
in the case of the telegraph, naturalization occurred
before popularization, he provides only glimpses
of how and why the telegraph was popularized. A
thorough account of telegraph popularization in this
book would have been a welcome balance to other
depictions of the telegraph as the "Victorian Internet." Nonetheless, such an expansive and engaging
work is difficult to fault. Network Nation will be
an invaluable resource for an array of historians in
years to come.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2013