This article has a double aim: one empirical–historical and one theoretical. First, it analyzes how the idea of an “alternative” use of wireless (namely, broadcasting) emerged and was debated inside the British Marconi Company in the first two decades of the 20th century. This historical part, based on unpublished sources preserved in the Marconi Archives, shows that this idea was (rationally) opposed by the majority of company’s management. Second, this article aims to place private companies at the center of media historiography, and more in general media studies, through a multifocal approach.
Amateur Radiotelegraphists of Great Britain. (1921, December30). Petition to the Rt. Hon. F. G. Kellaway M. P. postmaster-general (MA, B13.1, HIS154, MS1799). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
2.
ArceneauxN. (2013). News on the air: The New York Herald, newspapers, and wireless telegraphy, 1899–1917, American Journalism, 30, 160-181.
3.
ArceneauxN. (2014). The ecology of wireless newspapers: Publishing on islands and ships, 1899-1913. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91, 562-577.
4.
Arthur Richard Burrows 1882-1947. (n.d.). Special collection in the BBC archives, S236/21.
5.
BakerW. J. (1970). A history of the Marconi Company. London, England: Methuen.
6.
BalbiG. (2009). Studying the social history of telecommunications: Between Anglophone and continental traditions. Media History, 15, 85-101.
7.
BalbiG. (2010). Radio before radio: Araldo Telefonico and the invention of Italian broadcasting. Technology and Culture, 51, 786-808.
8.
BalbiG.KittlerJ. (2016). One-to-One and one-to-many dichotomy: Grand theories, periodization, and historical narratives in communication studies. The International Journal of Communication, 10, 1971-1990.
9.
BalbiG.NataleS. (2015). The double birth of wireless: Italian radio amateurs and the interpretive flexibility of new media. Journal of Radio & Audio Media, 22, 26-41.
BarnouwE. (1966). A history of broadcasting in the United States. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
12.
BenjaminL. M. (1993). In search of the Sarnoff “radio music box” memo: Separating myth from reality. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 37, 325-335.
13.
BenjaminL. M. (2002). In search of the Sarnoff “radio music box” memo: Nally’s reply. Journal of Radio Studies, 9, 97-106.
14.
BlakeE. (1921, May11). [Memorandum to the joint General Manager of Marconi’s Wireless telegraph Co. Ltd about Mr Burrows’ scheme for distribution of news by wireless telephone] [Typewritten] (MA, A11, MS311).
15.
BlondheimM. (1994). News over the wires: The telegraph and the flow of public information in America, 1844-1897. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
16.
BoulangerJ.FerriéG. (1909). La télégraphie sans fil at les ondes électriques [Wireless telegraphy and electric waves]. Paris, France: Berger-Levrault et Cie.
17.
BriggsA. (1961). The Birth of Broadcasting, 1896-1927: Vol. 1. The History of broadcasting in the United Kingdom. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
18.
British Post Office. (1919, December5). Allocation of waves [Annex of a Letter to Mr Gray] (MA, A11, MS311).
19.
BrocaA. (1904). La télégraphie sans fils [Wireless telegraphy]. Paris, France: Villars.
20.
BurrowsA. R. (1912, December28). Aerial voices: Surprise for “wireless amateurs”: Eavesdropping. The London Standard.
21.
BurrowsA. R. (1918). Wireless possibilities. The Year Book of Wireless, pp. 952-962.
22.
BurrowsA. R. (1920, August5). Uses by wireless. Outline of address to second Imperial press conference at Ottawa [Typewritten] (MA, A10, MS310). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
23.
BurrowsA. R. (1921, May6). [Memorandum to Henry W. Allen] (MA, A11, MS311). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
24.
BurrowsA. R. (1922a, May10). [Letter private and confidential to Robbins] (MA, A11, MS311). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
25.
BurrowsA. R. (1922b, December5). [Letter to Godfrey C. Isaacs] (MA, A11, MS311). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
26.
BurrowsA. R. (1922c, June23). [Letter to H. W. Allen] (MA, A11, MS311). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
27.
BurrowsA. R. (1924). The story of broadcasting. London, England: Cassell.
28.
Cessation of Writtle wireless concerts. (1923, February2). [Typewritten] (MA, A11, MS312, 2MT). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
29.
A Chapter of Marconi History—8. The Birth of British Broadcasting. (n.d.). Unpublished manuscript. Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
30.
Company Reports. Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company Ltd. Report of the Twenty-Third Ordinary general meeting. (1920, July 10). The Wireless World, VIII(8), 299-306.
31.
CorretP. (1912). Télégraphie sans fil [Wireless telegraphy]. Paris, France: Imprimerie Paul Feron-Vrau.
32.
DavidP. A. (1986). Understanding the economics of QWERTY: The necessity of history. In ParkerW. N. (Ed.), Economic history and the modern economist (pp. 332-337). Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
33.
de WardtH. (1920, August). [Letter to Marconi’s Wireless telegraph Co.] (MA, A11, MS311). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
34.
DellingerJ. H. (1927). The possibilities of directional radio transmission. Journal of the Franklin Institute, 204, 239-243.
35.
DouglasS. J. (1989). Inventing American broadcasting, 1899-1922. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
36.
EmeryW. B. (1969). National and international systems of broadcasting; their history, operation, and control. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
37.
FriedewaldM. (2000). The beginnings of radio communication in Germany, 1897-1918. Journal of Radio Studies, 7, 441-462.
38.
HamiltonJ. (2007). Unearthing broadcasting in the Anglophone world. In AclandC. (Ed.), Residual media (pp. 283-300). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
39.
HeadrickD. R. (1991). The invisible weapon: Telecommunications and international politics, 1851-1945. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
40.
HendyD. (2013). The dreadful world of Edwardian wireless. In NicholasS.O’MalleyT. (Eds.), The media, social fears and moral panics: Historical perspectives (pp. 76-89). New York, NY: Routledge.
41.
HillsJ. (2002). The struggle for control of global communication: The formative century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
42.
HoarP. (2012). Morse, magic and modernity: Receiving radio in New Zealand, 1900-1914. In MollgaardM. (Ed.), Radio and society: New thinking for an old medium (pp. 1-15). Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars.
43.
HongS. (2001). Wireless: From Marconi’s black-box to the audion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
44.
HughesT. P. (1983). Networks of power: Electrification in Western society, 1880-1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
45.
HuurdemanA. (2003). The worldwide history of telecommunications. Hobeck, Germany: John Wiley.
46.
Le GoffJ. (1988). Mentalities: A History of ambiguities. In Le GoffJ.NoraP. (Eds.), Constructing the past. Essays in historical methodology (pp. 166-180). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
47.
MarconiG. (1920, August9). [Circular letter to the Chief Engineer of Marconi’s Wireless telegraph Co. Ltd] (MA, A11, MS311). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
48.
MarconiG. (1931, September19). The development of wireless telephony [Typewritten transcript of a radio speech] (MA, A10, MS309). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
Marconi telegraphy. A short history of its invention, evolution and commercial development. (1910). [Typewritten] (MA, B13.1, HIS259, MS1828). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
51.
MarvinC. (1988). When old technologies were new: Thinking about electric communications in the late nineteenth century. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
52.
Memorandum on Wireless Press Ltd. (1916). [Typewritten] (MA, A9, MS301). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
53.
Papers concerning the Imperial press conference. (1920). (MA, A10, MS310). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
54.
PetitG. E.BouthillonL. (1912-1913). T.S.F. La télégraphie sans fil, la téléphonie sans fil, application diverses [T.S.F. Wireless telegraphy, wireless telephony, and other applications]. Paris, France: Libraire Ch. Delagrave.
55.
PhillipsJ. W. (1920, January1). [Letter to Marconi’s Wireless telegraph Co.] (MA, A11, MS311). T.S.F. La télégraphie sans fil, la téléphonie sans fil, application diverses.
56.
PinchT.BijkerW. (1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14, 399-441.
57.
RaboyM.2016. Marconi: The man who networked the world. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
58.
Register of Employees1922-1940. (n.d.). (MA, C5, MS649). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
59.
RosenbergN. (1996). Uncertainty and technological change. EconPapers—Conference Series Proceedings, 40, 91-125.
60.
SewellW. H. (1996). Three temporalities: Toward an eventful sociology. In McDonaldT. J. (Ed.), The Historic in the human sciences (pp. 245-280). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
61.
ShelanskiH. A. (1997). The bending line between conventional “broadcast” and wireless “carriage.”Columbia Law Review, 97, 1048-1080.
62.
SolariL. (1942). Sui mari e sui continenti con le onde elettriche [On the seas and continents thanks to electric waves]. Milan, Italy: Bocca.
63.
StarrP. (2004). The creation of the media: Political origins of modern communications. New York, NY: Basic Books.
64.
ThompsonJ. B. (1995). The media and modernity: A social theory of the media. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
65.
TomlinsonJ. D. (1945). The international control of radiocommunications. Ann Arbor, MI: J.W. Edwards.
66.
TurnerK. J. (2004). Insinuating the product into the message: An historical context for product placement. Journal of Promotion Management, 10(1/2), 9-14.
67.
WinseckD. R.PikeR. M. (2007). Communication and empire: Media, markets, and globalization, 1860-1930. Durham, CA: Duke University Press.
68.
The wireless telephone. Its principles briefly explained. With the compliments of Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Co., Ltd. (n.d.). [Leaflet] (MA, A10, MS307). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
69.
Wonders of talk by wireless. New business link with Europe. (1921, May 13). The Times (MA, A10, MS309). Marconi Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
70.
The work of the Publicity department. (1920, July). The Aerial, 1(II), 5.
