The Deep Digital Divide: The Telephone in British India 1883-1933

After the telegraph the telephone is seen as the second means of the media revolution which took place after the middle of the nineteenth century. In the USA the telephone was used widely within a short time after its invention and implementation. Yet, whereas in the USA the telephone was hailed as...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung. - GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. - 35(2010), 1 (131), Seite 188-208
1. Verfasser: Mann, Michael (VerfasserIn)
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2010
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung
Schlagworte:Applied sciences Business Behavioral sciences Law Social sciences
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:After the telegraph the telephone is seen as the second means of the media revolution which took place after the middle of the nineteenth century. In the USA the telephone was used widely within a short time after its invention and implementation. Yet, whereas in the USA the telephone was hailed as a modern means of communication which helped to forge the nation, in Europe the telephone did not attract many public or private users. Particularly the British ruling class regarded the telephone as a means of domestic communication. This attitude towards the telephone had severe consequences in the colonial context as the British Indian government constructed telephone lines only as a means of administrative and military control representing an extended household. The lack of telephone lines in the successor states of British India, the Republics of Pakistan and India, was still prevalent at the end of the twentieth century.
ISSN:01726404