ABSTRACT This essay contends that the US Signal Corps’ wartime network had major consequences for the postwar development of the political economy of the telephone in the United States, France, and Europe. Our approach is transnational. In contrast to previous scholarship, which is mostly top-down, nation-centric, and preoccupied with the internal configuration of telephone networks that are typically studied inside the walls of discrete national containers, we widen the lens to explore a broad array of influences on network evolution, including those that originated from within individual operating companies and beyond national borders. Among the themes that we explore is transnational standard-setting. And among the agents of change that we emphasize is the influence of military conflict on personal networks, technical protocols, and international organizations. From such a vantage point, the First World War emerges as a constitutive moment in the making of the information infrastructure in the modern world.

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“胜利之路”：第一次世界大战如何塑造了美国和法国的电话政治经济

摘要 本文认为，美国通信兵团的战时网络对战后美国、法国和欧洲电话政治经济的发展产生了重大影响。我们的方法是跨国的。以往的学术研究大多是自上而下的、以国家为中心的，并且专注于电话网络的内部配置，而这些内部配置通常是在离散的国家容器的墙壁内进行研究，我们拓宽了视野，以探索对网络的广泛影响。网络演进，包括源自个别运营公司内部和跨国界的网络演进。我们探索的主题之一是跨国标准制定。在我们强调的变革推动因素中，军事冲突对个人网络、技术协议、和国际组织。从这样一个有利的角度来看，第一次世界大战是现代世界信息基础设施建设的一个基本时刻。