Thesis ID: CBB001561689

The Telephone Shapes Los Angeles: Communications and Built Space, 1880--1950 (2006)

unapi

Bills, Emily (Author)


New York University
Cohen, Jean-Louis


Publication Date: 2006
Edition Details: Advisor: Cohen, Jean-Louis
Physical Details: 438 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation seeks to establish the telephone as a critical but unrecognized component in the development of Los Angeles into a major metropolis. It begins in 1880, when telephone lines bound the greater Los Angeles area into a comprehensible whole, and concludes in the early 1950s, when telephony became closely aligned with domestic activity in the home. It takes as starting point the view that it are the social conditions of production under capitalism that largely determine the physical configuration of settlement patterns and telephone infrastructure can be understood as a valuable component of that process. For example, the dissertation considers how the establishment of an extensive telephone 'network' was the first significant step toward drawing Los Angeles together as a unified region, both physically and psychologically. In so doing, it also refutes generalized interpretations of Los Angeles as a 'fragmented' city by detailing how patterns of telephone installation reveal a vast, but coordinated metropolis comprised of a strong central city linked to other 'hubs' of production and settlement. Four areas of inquiry delineate the telephone's influence on varied layers or spheres of space. The first chapter suggests that the spread-out composition of Los Angeles' mixed-use economy, together with the wiring efforts of city boosters, encouraged intense telephone dissemination across the region. Chapter two reviews AT&T's early efforts to encourage subscribers to view the space of the nation telephonically, and then applies this perception to the local level by detailing how 'telephone traveling' requirements reflect particular patterns of correspondence in Los Angeles. A third chapter examines whether telephone companies believed their utility was a fundamental part of community building projects and, in turn, whether Angelenos attributed any importance to telephony as a component in the creation of attractive and stable neighborhoods. The investigation concludes by detailing AT&T's efforts to encourage architects and homemakers to perceive the house as a series of spaces fully linked both within and without by telephone connections. This multilayered survey ultimately cites Los Angeles as a starting point for inserting telecommunications into the larger story of the growth of the modern metropolis.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 67/06 (2006): 1949. UMI pub. no. 3221929.


Citation URI
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Authors & Contributors
Shahvar, Soli
John, Richard R.
Katz, James Everett
Kragh, Helge S.
Mullaney, Thomas Shawn
Mullen, Megan
Journals
Technology and Culture
Iranian Studies
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
Humanities and Technology Review
International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology
Publishers
Indiana University
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Presses de l'Université de Montréal
Routledge
Springer
Transaction Publishers
Concepts
Telegraphs; telephones
Communication technology
Technology
Technology and society
Methods of communication; media
Colonialism
People
Lévi-Strauss, Claude
Marconi, Guglielmo
McLuhan, Marshall
Postman, Neil
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
21st century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Persia (Iran)
Brazil
India
Mexico
Institutions
International Telephone and Telegraph Company
Marconi Company
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