The Telephone Enterprise: The Evolution of the Bell System’s Horizontal Structure, 1876–1909 by Robert W. Garnet, and: The Anatomy of a Business Strategy: Bell, Western Electric, and the Origins of the American Telephone Industry by George David Smith, and: From Invention to Innovation: Long-Distance Telephone Transmission at the Turn of the Century by Neil H. Wasserman (review)
Paul B. Israel · Technology and Culture · 1987
164 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE volume, about 45 percent of that text is devoted to the footnotes; while there are many data and much editorial insight represented there, what is of general interest would be more useful in a monographic study or a reference work of another order. Henry’s life, and its embodiment in the Papers, exemplifies the historical and historiographical shift of centrality from the individual to the community and the institution and argues by example against additional editorial projects of this magnitude. What is to be done for the Henry Papers remains problematic. As the Smithsonian period in Henry’s life is reached, the project can be redirected with that institu tion as central. This opens up the possibility of a series of selected thematic volumes, of the editors’ devising, that would abandon the overall chronological structure, delete Henry’s experimental records, and incorporate in a very selective and deliberate way the papers of a number of individuals along with certain ones of the Smithsonian itself. Ironically, the history of American science and technology, partly through the stimulus of this project, has outgrown the Henry Papers as originally conceived. This ought to be admitted, and the editors should reexamine how their efforts can optimally serve the projected future needs of an established historical specialty. Clark A. Elliott* The Telephone Enterprise: The Evolution of the Bell System’s Horizontal Structure, 1876—1909. By Robert W. Garnet. Baltimore: Johns Hop kins University Press, 1985. Pp. xiii + 210; illustrations, figures, notes, bibliography, appendixes, index. $22.50. The Anatomy ofa Business Strategy: Bell, Western Electric, and the Origins of the American Telephone Industry. By George David Smith. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. Pp. xxii + 237; illustrations, notes, bibliography, appendixes, index. $20.00. From Invention to Innovation: Long-Distance Telephone Transmission at the Turn of the Century. By Neil H. Wasserman. Baltimore: Johns Hop kins University Press, 1985. Pp. xxiii+160; illustrations, notes, appendixes, index. $17.50. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Johns Hopkins University Press have worked together to produce a new series of publications that will be ofgreat interest to readers of Technol ogy and Culture. Based primarily on the wealth of material contained in the AT&T archives, this series consists of thematic monographs ana lyzing various aspects of that important company’s history. The three *Dr. Elliott is associate curator ofthe Harvard University Archives. He is the author ofBiographical Dictionary ofAmerican Science: The Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Centu ries (1979) and editor of the newsletter History of Science in America: News and Views. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 165 volumes reviewed here are the first result of this new publishing venture. While each is concerned with a different historical perspec tive, all demonstrate the way in which AT&T’s managers successfully introduced organizational innovations which allowed them to manage the technology that lay at the heart ofthe corporation. The AT&T was fortunate to have the management talent to innovate successfully, and for this reason the books in this series make a significant contribution to our knowledge of technology in the modern corporation. Robert Garnet’s study ofthe evolution ofthe Bell system’s horizontal structure serves as a good introduction for the series. He builds on Alfred Chandler’s powerful model, which holds that impersonal eco nomic and technological imperatives spurred the creation of new large-scale industrial corporations. Garnet adds a missing personal element to this model by showing how these imperatives were acted on by individual managers and he introduces an important political dimension. The emergence of the Bell telephone system was the result of a compromise between forces within the company working toward engineering efficiency, standardization, and centralized control and external political forces seeking to enforce free-market ideals. By this compromise, the company gained government approval for its monopoly position in long-distance telephony and became the central manager of a group of cooperating businesses concerned with provid ing efficient telephone service. George Smith’s study of vertical integration in the Bell system nicely complements Garnet’s study of horizontal integration. Indeed, vertical integration was directly influenced by the developing horizontal struc ture of the firm. As the Bell company moved from patent monopoly to operating monopoly...