Session Organizer: Andrew L. Russell, The Johns Hopkins University

Comment: Kenneth Lipartito, Florida International University

Papers:

“The Telegraph and the Emergence of International Standardizing Institutions”
JoAnne Yates and Craig Murphy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
Wellesley College
“Standardization Across the Boundaries of the Bell System, 1920-1938”
Andrew L. Russell, The Johns Hopkins University
“Creating Fax Standards: Technology Red in Tooth and Claw?”
Jonathan Coopersmith, Texas A&M University
“Technical Standards and the FCC: Changing Patterns”
Christopher H. Sterling, George Washington University

Session Description:

Technical standards provide the common bonds that sustain communication networks. However—ironically—there is no standard method for creating technical standards. The papers in this session describe a variety of institutional settings—including monopoly firms, national governments, and international organizations—that have produced standards for communication technologies, and evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of these institutional alternatives. As a whole, the session addresses a number of important questions for historians of technology: What factors influenced governmental decisions to create or mandate standards? How did non-governmental bodies devise procedures to establish broad consensus around a single standard? When have specific firms been able to impose a standard through market competition? Finally, to what extent did the choice of standardization venue influence the success or failure of a given technology?

The first paper, by JoAnne Yates and Craig Murphy, examines the emergence of two international organizations—the International Telecommunications Union and International Electrotechnical Commission—that sought to set standards for telegraph networks. As a technology that crossed national boundaries and was managed by a variety of firms and nations, the electric telegraph provided an early impetus for organizing at an international level to coordinate technical standards. Moreover, it helped catalyze the emergence of the complex voluntary consensus standard-setting system that still exists.
The second paper, by Andrew Russell, looks at AT&T’s standardization activities between 1920 and 1938. Although it exercised monopoly control over standards in the telephone network, AT&T engineers and executives were active in industry groups that set standards for other important aspects of AT&T’s business, such as safety standards and specifications for acoustics, mechanical devices, and raw materials. The central question of the paper is, what was the character of AT&T’s involvement with these industry standards groups? Do these activities indicate the limits of AT&T’s influence, or do they suggest ways that AT&T shaped technologies that lay beyond its monopolistic grasp?

The third paper, by Jonathan Coopersmith, discusses two different strategies for setting standards for fax networks between 1970 and 2000. The first efforts to establish standards through market competition led to incompatibilities that hindered the growth of the fax market. Subsequent efforts to negotiate standards between proprietary rivals and across American, Japanese, and British interests found some success in the 1980s, but once again fragmented as computer technologies altered the fax market. These examples demonstrate how neither the market-based approach nor the negotiated approach were obviously superior.

The fourth paper, by Christopher Sterling, looks more closely at the changing role of the American Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in an era of “deregulation.” Before the 1980s, the FCC unilaterally selected standards for technologies such as FM radio and color television. During the 1980s, however, the FCC changed course and experimented with a “market-oriented” approach to standardization for services such as AM stereo and teletext—before reversing course once again to impose standards for high-definition television. This paper evaluates factors that influenced the changing patterns of standard-setting at the FCC, including politics, ideology, technology, economics, and lobbying.

Taken together, the four papers do not offer a prescription for any “one best way” to set standards. Instead, these histories consider how alternative institutional approaches to standardization can shed new light on the political, economic, and cultural values that shaped the design and use of networked communication technologies.