Expectations
Jean-Michel Johnston · 2021
Abstract This chapter focuses upon the 1830s, when intellectuals, scientists, state officials, and entrepreneurs throughout Germany placed their hopes on the possibility of instantaneous, long-distance communication and increasingly became aware of the practicalities of bringing this vision to life. The correspondence of the scientists Carl Friedrich Gauß and Carl Steinheil illuminates their research into telegraphy and the networks connecting academics across Germany, through which it was discussed. Railway companies took an interest in this research, as they began to see in the technology a potential means of improving the efficiency and profitability of their services. The writings of the political theorists Friedrich List and Robert von Mohl, meanwhile, demonstrate the growing recognition that telegraphic communication could unleash the economic energies inherent in society, while also presenting new challenges for the administration of the state. Bremen is introduced as a counterexample to developments taking place across Germany. By the late 1830s these ideas were brought together as scientists and entrepreneurs turned to one another and to the state as a means of gathering the financial, logistical, and technical resources which they required to develop the technology.