Principal Investigators:
PD Dr. Christian Henrich-Franke
Researchers:
Dr. Matthias Röhr
Research Assistants:
Julia Kleine
Isabella Willeke
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.
Publications
2021
Gehlen, Boris and Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2021. “Unternehmen und medialer Wandel – Skizze eines Forschungsfelds.”
Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 66 (1): 43-50.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/zug-2020-0032.
Henrich-Franke, Christian. 2021. “Innovationsmotor Medientechnik. Von der Schreibmaschine zur «Mittleren Datentechnik» bei der Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (1950 bis 1969).”
Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 66 ( 1): 93–117. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
https://doi.org/10.1515/zug-2020-0023.
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.
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
2019
Elsner, Laura; Henrich-Franke, Christian; Neutsch, Cornelius and Thiemeyer, Guido, eds. 2019. “Infrastrukturelle Grundlagen des europäischen Wirtschaftsraums: Akteure der Integration – Akteure der Desintegration.” In Integration und Desintegration Europas, edited by Schulz, G. and Spoerer, M., 73-98. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Henrich-Franke, Christian, eds. 2019. “Historical infrastructure research – a (sub-)discipline in the making?.” In
Infrastructuring Publics, edited by Korn, M.; Reißmann, W.; Röhl, T. and Sittler, D., 49-68. Berlin.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20725-0_3.
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.
https://doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/613.
Henrich-Franke, Christian and Laborie, Léonard, eds. 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 Balbi, Gabriele and Fickers, Andreas, 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, eds. 2018. “Engineering Expertise and the Regulation of International Telecommunications in Europe from the 1950s to the 1970s.” In
Transnational Expertise, edited by Schneiker, Andrea; Henrich-Franke, Christian; Kaiser, Robert and Lahusen, Christian. Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845291277-75.
Henrich-Franke, Christian and Laborie, Léonard. 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, eds. 2017. “‘Epistemic Communities’ of Radio Regulators: Gametes of a Europeanization of National Foreign Radio Policies.” In The Quest for Europeanization, edited by Clemens, Gabriele, 237-248. Stuttgart: Steiner.
2016
