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dc.contributor.authorNoakes, Richard
dc.date.accessioned2014-11-20T12:02:11Z
dc.date.issued2013-04-10
dc.description.abstractBy the late nineteenth century the submarine telegraph cable industry, which had blossomed in the 1850s, had reached what historians regard as technological maturity. For a host of commercial, cultural and technical reasons, the industry seems to have become conservative in its attitude towards technological development, which is reflected in the small scale of its staff and facilities for research and development. This paper argues that the attitude of the cable industry towards research and development was less conservative and altogether more complex than historians have suggested. Focusing on the crucial case of the Eastern Telegraph Company, the largest single operator of submarine cables, it shows how the company encouraged inventive activity among outside and in-house electricians and, in 1903, established a small research laboratory where staff and outside scientific advisors pursued new methods of cable signalling and cable designs. The scale of research and development at the Eastern Telegraph Company, however, was small by comparison to that of its nearest competitor, Western Union, and dwarfed by that of large electrical manufacturers. This paper explores the reasons for this comparatively weak provision but also suggests that this was not inappropriate for a service-sector firm.en_GB
dc.identifier.citationVol. 47 (1), pp. 119 - 146en_GB
dc.identifier.doi10.1017/S0007087413000174
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10871/15904
dc.language.isoenen_GB
dc.publisherCambridge University Pressen_GB
dc.rightsPhotographs © 2014 Cable and Wireless Communications, by kind permission of the Telegraph Museum Porthcurnoen_GB
dc.titleIndustrial Research at the Eastern Telegraph Company, 1872-1929en_GB
dc.typeArticleen_GB
dc.date.available2014-11-20T12:02:11Z
dc.identifier.issn0007-0874
dc.descriptionCopyright © British Society for the History of Science 2013en_GB
dc.identifier.eissn1474-001X
dc.identifier.journalBritish Journal for the History of Scienceen_GB


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