A02 - The Culture of Telecommunication Standardisation in the Tensions of the Digital and Neoliberal ‘Double Revolution’

Finished after Phase II.

Principal Investigator:

Researchers:

This project examines the interdependencies between technical development and institutional change in the period of the digital and neoliberal ‘double revolution’ around the 1980s. In the second funding period individual companies from the European IT industry (midrange computing) like Philips, Nixdorf, Olivetti or Siemag and their individual protagonists are taken into account in order to understand the interrelations between technical standardisation and market liberalisation alongside the analogue/digital threshold. Remarkably, these producers of hardware and software technologies, which had taken a continuous development of technology, media and data practices since mechanical typewriters, vanished from the markets in the 1980s. This project starts from the assumption that the standardisation culture, due to its normative categories of thinking, standardising and regulating, shaped the digitisation of European telecommunication networks and impacted midrange computing. Path dependencies had a negative effect on the production of hardware and software, even though, European producers of midrange computers remained innovative and competitive for a long time. The thesis, that Europeans were no longer innovative in the IT industry, will be questioned in the project.

A02

Publications

2023

Damm, Veit, and Christian Henrich-Franke, eds. 2023. Historische Grundlagen der mobilen Gesellschaft: Technologien der Verkehrslenkung und drahtloser Information auf Straßen und Wasserwegen in Europa. Baden-Baden. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748937289.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2023. “Patents and Licences. Basic elements of cooperation in the early history of electronic data processing in Europe”. In Varieties of Cooperation, edited by Clemens Eisenmann, Kathrin Englert, Cornelius Schubert, and Ehler Voss, 67-80. Berlin. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39037-2_4.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2023. “Pfadabhängigkeiten in Verkehrssystemen – Konzeptionelle Überlegungen”. In Historische Grundlagen der mobilen Gesellschaft: Technologien der Verkehrslenkung und drahtloser Information auf Straßen und Wasserwegen in Europa, edited by Veit Damm and Christian Henrich-Franke, 49-59. Baden-Baden. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748937289-49.

2022

Henrich-Franke, Christian, and Gerold Ambrosius. 2022. Geschichte der Wirtschaftsordnungen der BRD und der EU: Veränderung, Eigenständigkeit und Verflechtung von 1950 bis 2020. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38383-1.

Röhr, Matthias, and Hagen Schönrich. 2022. “Weder Rundfunk noch Presse. Die Einführung des Bildschirmtextes im Kontext der medienpolitischen Debatten der 1970er und 1980er Jahre”. TG Technikgeschichte 89 (2): 123-48. doi.org/10.5771/0040-117X-2022-2-123.

2021

Gehlen, Boris, and Christian. Henrich-Franke. 2021. “Unternehmen und medialer Wandel – Skizze eines Forschungsfelds”. Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/zug-2020-0032.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2021. “Von analog zu digital, von Kabel und Satellit zum Internet: Die Entwicklung der Rundfunktechnik”. In Behmer, Makus (Hg.): Vielfalt vor Ort. Die Entwicklung des privaten Rundfunks in Bayern (1985-2020), 95-106. Bamberg. https://doi.org/10.20378/irb-49753.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2021. “Innovationsmotor Medientechnik. Von der Schreibmaschine zur «Mittleren Datentechnik» bei der Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (1950 bis 1969)”. Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/zug-2020-0023.

Röhr, Matthias. 2021. Der lange Weg zum Internet. Computer als Kommunikationsmedien zwischen Gegenkultur und Industriepolitik in den 1970er/1980er Jahren. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839459300-012.

2020

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2020. “EC competition law and the idea of ‘open networks’ (1950s–1980s)”. In Internet Histories, 4:125-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1743045.

2019

Elsner, Laura, Christian Henrich-Franke, Cornelius Neutsch, and Guido Thiemeyer. 2019. “Infrastrukturelle Grundlagen des europäischen Wirtschaftsraums: Akteure der Integration – Akteure der Desintegration”. In Integration und Desintegration Europas, edited by G. Schulz and M. Spoerer, 73-98. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2019. Globale Welt 1970-2015. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. https://www.kohlhammer.de/wms/instances/KOB/appDE/Globale-Welt-1970-2015-978-3-17-033250-8.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2019. “Historical infrastructure research – a (sub-)discipline in the making?”. In Infrastructuring Publics, edited by M. Korn, W. Reißmann, T. Röhl, and D. Sittler, 49-68. Berlin. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20725-0_3.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2019. “Computer Networks on Copper Cables”. Revue Histoire et Informatique/ Zeitschrift Geschichte und Informatik 1: 65-78. http://blog.ahc-ch.ch/publikationen/bd-21-2019-computer-network-histories/.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2019. “‘The Mickey Mouse Telephone’ – An icon of turning tides in the relationship between the state, the economy and society in 1980s Germany”. In Working Paper Series, 1-14. 12. https://doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/613.

Henrich-Franke, Christian, and Léonard Laborie. 2019. “Technology taking over diplomacy? The ‘Comité consultatif international (for) Fernschreiben’ (CCIF) and its relationship to the ITU in the early history of telephone standardization, 1923 – 1947”. In History of the International Telecommunication Union, edited by Gabriele Balbi and Andreas Fickers, 193-216. Berlin. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110669701-010.

2018

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2018. “Comparing Cultures of Expert Regulation: Governing Cross-Border Infrastructures”. Contemporary European History 27 (2): 280–300. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777318000139.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2018. “Engineering Expertise and the Regulation of International Telecommunications in Europe from the 1950s to the 1970s”. In Transnational Expertise, edited by Andrea Schneiker, Christian Henrich-Franke, Robert Kaiser, and Christian Lahusen. Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845291277-75.

Henrich-Franke, Christian, and Léonard Laborie. 2018. “European Union for and by Communication Networks: Continuities and Discontinuities during the Second World War”. Comparativ 28 (1): 82-100. https://doi.org/10.26014/j.comp.2018.01.05.

2017

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2017. “And Postal Services? . The Universal Postal Union and the Digitalization of Communication”. Media in Action 1: 131-45. https://www001.zimt.uni-siegen.de/ojs/index.php/mia/article/view/3/1.

Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2017. “‘Epistemic Communities’ of Radio Regulators: Gametes of a Europeanization of National Foreign Radio Policies”. In The Quest for Europeanization, edited by Gabriele Clemens, 237-48. Stuttgart: Steiner.

2016

Ambrosius, Gerold, and Christian Henrich-Franke. 2016. Integration of Infrastructures in Europe in Historical Comparison. Basel: Springer International Publishing. ISBN: 978-3-319-22466-4. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319224664.