A sweeping, revisionist historical analysis of telecommunications networks, from the dawn of the republic to the 21st century. Telecommunications networks are vast, intricate, hugely costly systems for exchanging messages and information-within cities and across continents. From the Post Office and the telegraph to today's internet, these networks have sown domestic division while also acting as sources of international power. In Crossed Wires, Dan Schiller, who has conducted archival research on US telecommunications for more than forty years, recovers the extraordinary social history of the major network systems of the United States. Drawing on arrays of archival documents and secondary sources, Schiller reveals that this history has been shaped by sharp social and political conflict and is embedded in the larger history of an expansionary US political economy. Schiller argues that networks have enabled US imperialism through a a recurrent "American system" of cross-border communications. Three other key findings wind through the book. First, business users of networks--more than carriers, and certainly more than residential users--have repeatedly determined how telecommunications systems have developed. Second, despite their current importance for virtually every sphere of social life, networks have been consecrated above all to aiding the circulation of commodities. Finally, although the preferences of executives and officials have broadly determined outcomes, these elites have repeatedly had to contend against the ideas and organizations of workers, social movement activists, and other reformers. This authoritative and comprehensive revisionist history of US telecommunications argues that not technology but a dominative--and contested--political economy drove the evolution of this critical industry.

In early 1970 President Richard M. Nixon created a new executive office, the Office of Telecommunications Policy (OTP), and appointed Dr. Clay T. Whitehead as OTP's first director. (Whitehead had previously been on the staff of Peter Flanigan, a presidential assistant responsible for telecommunications policy at the White House.) What was the motivation behind this action? Were political interests being served? With what results? Thomas Will believes that these and other questions must be raised in view of the history of the Nixon administration. In an attempt to answer them, he examines the development of telecommunications policy in the executive branch from 1900 to 1970. Dr. Will reviews the early executive branch involvement in radio telecommunications, the Radio Act of 1927 and the Communications Act of 1934, the technological advance of radio telecommunications and its effect on the executive branch before and after World War II, the. appointments of telecommunications advisors to presidents from 1951 to 1967, and the creation of the President's Task Force in 1967 to deal with the problems created by an inherently limited radio spectrum. He traces the steps taken to create the OTP and analyzes the extent to which the office reflected a traditional progression of executive branch telecommunications authority. His study and conclusions are directly and essentially relevant to the current debate on telecommunications policy.

As the telecommunication and information field expands and becomes more varied, so do publications about these technologies and industries. This book is a first attempt to provide a general guide to that wealth of English-language publications -- both books and periodicals -- on all aspects of telecommunication. It is a comprehensive, evaluative sourcebook for telecommunications research in the United States that brings together a topically-arranged, cross-referenced, and indexed volume in one place. The information provided is only available by consulting a succession of different directories, guides, bibliographies, yearbooks, and other resources. On the one hand, it is a directory that describes in detail the major entities that comprise the American telecommunication research infrastructure including federal and state government offices and agencies, and private, public, and corporate research institutions. On the other hand, it is a bibliography that identifies and assesses the most important and useful reference and critical resources about U.S. telecommunication history, technology, industry and economics, social applications and impacts, plus policy, law and regulations, and role in the global telecommunication marketplace. No existing guide covers all of these aspects in the depth and detail of this volume.