Article ID: CBB001201114

Privacy's Waste Products: Touch, Contagion and Public Telephone Design (2014)

unapi

Bound up in twin desires for privacy and intimacy, the telephone has a long, quarrelsome rapport with the sense of touch. Delving into the design of public telephony, primarily in the United States, between 1880 and 1910, this article plumbs how telephone booths evolved to address the tangible by-products of soundproofing spaces for privacy. Health officials and the calling public targeted booth designs as seedy and infective, unresponsive to the sweat, respiration and odours callers' bodies exuded. Seen as factors communicating diseases, these by-products turned telephony into a uniquely early `viral' technology, and technological touch into an involuntary, atmospheric and contaminating experience. As a corrective, US booths became wedded to air conditioning. The marriage secured public telephony as an individualized sensory space, and equated privacy with sanitation. This transformation integrated telephony into a larger design shift around the turn of the century towards tactile restraint, individuation, and hygiene, and reveals how health was designed into the very feel of early media artefacts.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001201114/

Similar Citations

Article Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de; (2013)
Epidemics in the News: Health and Hygiene in the Press in Periods of Crisis (/isis/citation/CBB001320417/)

Article Kashin, Konstantin; Pollock, Ethan; (2013)
Public Health and Bathing in Late Imperial Russia: A Statistical Approach (/isis/citation/CBB001201406/)

Book Fairchild, Amy L.; Bayer, Ronald; Colgrove, James; (2007)
Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America (/isis/citation/CBB000953218/)

Book Peter Ward; (2019)
The Clean Body: A Modern History (/isis/citation/CBB337509863/)

Book Rogaski, Ruth; (2004)
Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (/isis/citation/CBB000641996/)

Article Kanikadan, Paula Yuri Sugishita; Marques, Maria Cristina da Costa; (2013)
Uma trajetória dos profissionais de saúde ingleses, 1815--1858 (/isis/citation/CBB001420631/)

Book Malin, Brenton J.; (2014)
Feeling Mediated: A History of Media Technology and Emotion in America (/isis/citation/CBB001552218/)

Article Noakes, Richard; (2014)
Industrial Research at the Eastern Telegraph Company, 1872--1929 (/isis/citation/CBB001321056/)

Article Salustiano Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Neto; (2020)
Inteligência de sinais no Estado Novo: ciência e tecnologia aplicadas à intercepção telefônica (/isis/citation/CBB103115309/)

Article Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de; (2014)
As epidemias nas notícias em Portugal: cólera, peste, tifo, gripe e varíola, 1854--1918 (/isis/citation/CBB001420729/)

Book Shaoling Ma; (2021)
The Stone and the Wireless: Mediating China, 1861–1906 (/isis/citation/CBB089452995/)

Article Wetton, Jenny; (2007)
The Early History of Telephony in Manchester, 1877--1898 (/isis/citation/CBB000831459/)

Article Wistoft, Birgitte; (2010)
A Devilish Device: Attitudes to Telephony, 1876--1920 (/isis/citation/CBB001231627/)

Article Sánchez Miñana, Jesús; Sánchez Ruiz, Carlos; (2011)
Sobre la difusión del teléfono de Bell en sus comienzos (1876--1877) (/isis/citation/CBB001212079/)

Authors & Contributors
Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de
Ma, Shaoling
Ward, Peter
Armando López Rodríguez
Couto, Cristiana
Wistoft, Birgitte
Concepts
Public health
Hygiene
Telegraphs; telephones
Disease and diseases
Telephone industry
Technology and culture
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
Modern
18th century
17th century
Places
United States
Portugal
China
Great Britain
Brazil
Tangier (Morocco)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment