patriotism and profit patriotism and profit rewarding innovative communications in the great war...
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Patriotism and profitPatriotism and profitrewarding innovative communications in the Great
War Elizabeth Bruton & Graeme Gooday
AHRC project: “Innovating in Combat”
University of Leeds & Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
‘Innovating in Combat: Telecommunications and intellectual
property in the First World War• Aims: to help museums, archives,
and public to better appreciate the significance of communications technologies and patents during World War One
• Partners: BT archives, IET archives, Imperial War Museum North, Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Science Museum, University of Leeds HSTM Museum
http://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat
Museum of the History of Science, Oxford Lecture 23rd January 2014
Outline• WW1 centenary commemorations –
reconsider role of science, tech etc
• One issue of debate: who were victors?
Industrial war profiteers (e.g. Vickers)
• Commercial profit vs. patriotic sacrifice Inconsistent? Merchants of Death thesis
• Telecommunications important but overlooked case of non-lethal innovation
• Marconi, Moseley and Fuller: rather contrasting WW1 perspectives. 'Are YOU in this?', courtesy of the
Imperial War Museum.© IWM, Art.IWM PST 2712.
Archival resources
• BT Archives preserves the historical information of British Telecommunications plc and its predecessors from the early part of the nineteenth century up to the present day, effectively the history of telecommunications services in the United Kingdom and from the UK to overseas.
• Recently (July 2013) launched digital archives in collaboration with University of Coventry and National Archives - http://www.digitalarchives.bt.com/web/arena
• IET Archives hold a unique collection of material promoting and preserving the history of science, engineering and technology. Includes biographies, featured articles, online exhibitions, research guides, information about the IET's history.
• http://www.theiet.org/resources/library/archives/
New perspectives on WWI?• BBC World War One season offers ‘new
perspectives on World War One’ including exploration of propaganda and patriotism
• Historian Dan Snow argues ‘much of what we think we know about the 1914-18 conflict is wrong’ in Lions and donkeys: 10 big myths about World War One debunked
• January 2014: Education Secretary Michael Gove criticises depictions of World War 1 as a ‘misbegotten shambles’.
• A denigration of patriotism and courage? • Was it, as Gove claimed, ‘plainly a just war’
to combat aggression by a German elite bent on domination?
Michael Gove MP, 2010.
Image licensed through Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons.
New perspectives on WWI? contd• Much of these “new perspectives” on WWI
are instead revisionist accounts• But can a truly new perspective on WWI be
uncovered?• Yes! WWI telecommunications is
understudied field and examines non-weapons technologies which had significant impact on post-war developments
• In relation to Michael Gove’s comments, should we accept his rhetorical framing of this debate in terms of patriotism ?
• What about those who profited from war?• How might we use the themes of patriotism
vs profit to interpret wartime science and technology?
Wire-laying on the Western Front, World War One.
Image licensed through Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons.
Some key themesSome key themes
The Cost of The Cost of
“Through” 1917 Francis Martin, Royal Engineers .
Image courtesy Royal Signals Museum.
£1.5million awarded to 140+ inventors, 1919-32.
Compare British national debt post-WW1: £1.5. billion
Patriotism vs profit in science?• Ethical question: should innovators ever
profit from warfare – funding or careers? • Motives only of altruism, e.g. patriotically?• Is patriotism necessarily opposed to profit? • Present: Scientists for Global Responsibility:
UK’s science’s 20th C great reliance on military funding (Edgerton: Warfare State).
• But not so in early World War One: sacrifice of scientists’ lives to war more than profit
• Young physicist Henry Moseley served in Gallipoli as signals engineer: died 1915.
• Could have safely researched in Oxford lab or pursued wartime research like Henry Tizard
Henry Moseley, c.1910.Copyright: Royal Society
Experimental account of ‘atomic numbers’ via X-ray spectra in 1913.
So what was World War 1 about?• Romantic tragedy for poets? Owen, Brooke But many UK survivors held different views
• Patriotic fight over deeply-held principles? Many soldiers felt they were pawns in a game
• “Chemists’ War” (Rose & Rose) but… J. Ambrose Fleming in 1915: “It is beyond
any doubt that this war is a war of engineers and chemists quite as much as of soldiers” (UCL)
• Science made warfare nastier, not more decisive, but engineering & chemistry gained.
• Industrial war: battle of imperial economies Outcome of Great war about finance: Germany’s economy collapsed
J. Ambrose Fleming, 1906. Professor of Electrical Engineering, UCL
Image available in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Telecommunications mattered too• Communications key feature of warfare –
need interconnected combat machinery pigeon, messengers, telegraph etc
• Key issues: speed, reliability, & non-interception – telephone brings benefit?
• Wireless used since Second Boer War (1899-
1902).• Symmetrical use of wireless & telephone in
Russo-Japanese War (1904-5).
• Counter-measures taken against security risks: defensive and offensive.
• In UK outbreak of war on 4 August 1914 & armistice on 11 November 1918 both announced by wireless signals – Marconi
Transcript of wireless message sent from Marconi station at Poldhu on 4 August 1914.
Image courtesy of Burton-upon-Trent Amateur Radio club.
Marconi the patriotic exception?• Marconi company innovations in wireless
point to point communication: 1897 & 1900
• 1914: British Marconi Co. patriotically offers wireless operators & training to services.
• Company allowed government ‘censors’ to monitor all wireless communications – code-breakers in Admiralty’s secret ‘Room 40’.
• No upfront demand for payment. In summer 1915 Marconi’s General Manager complained “not one penny-piece has yet been refunded to us.”BT Archives POST 30/4162
Marconi’s famous four-sevens patent, granted in 1900.
Image available in the public domain
Meanwhile in the French trenches ‘In the summer of 1915 the enemy did suddenly appear to be extraordinarily well informed of all that was going on behind our lines. This was manifested in many ways… Carefully planned raids and minor attacks were met by hostile fire, exactly directed, and timed to the minute of the attack. One day, even, a well-known Scotch battalion took over its new front to the strains of its regimental march, exceedingly well played upon a German cornet’
Major R.E. Priestley, The Signal Service in the European
War of 1914-18 (France) 1921, pp.98-99 Raymond Edward Priestley, by unknown photographer, 1938.
University of Melbourne Archives, UMA/I/1950
1915: Changing role of science:
• Stalemate in trenches: German innovations in poison gas warfare, and devastating telecommunications interception
• Reveals German model of state investment in centrally co-ordinated scientific research could potentially win war
• Uncoordinated private industry, laissez-faire invention, and old-fashioned British heroism clearly was not enough!
• UK government moves to establish national Department of Scientific Industrial Research (DSIR) – costs £1m, opens 1916.
• ‘Defence of the Realm’ Act (1914) extended to compel (!) industries to prioritise government & military orders.
Winning wars, rewarding victories• Arms and infrastructure supported by science raised to a level
that, with US input from 1917, could support military victory
• State support had noticeable effect: key development of tank and aeroplane rapidly developed to radically revised forms
• 1919: Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors rewarded hundreds of innovations credited as crucial to victory
• Commission rejects many claims for inventions it judged to lack genuine novelty or life-saving significance.
• Eventually paid £1.5 million (about £75 million today) in a Britain nearly bankrupted by overall cost of war(£1.5 billion)
Fullerphone• Anti-interception telegraphic device by
Major A. Clement Fuller in 1915-16• Invented privately in ‘cottage’:
technique of chopped up tiny telegraph signals
• Miniscule earth currents of signal transmuted to ‘noise’ - very difficult to intercept.
• Claim for telegraphic ‘Fullerphone’ to Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, 1920
• Claimed £21,899 – but only awarded £3,500 due to limited originality & patent benefits
• Instead made OBE 1922 and CBE 1941, promoted to Major General
World War One Fullerphone.
Image available in the public domain.
The Marconi case for reward• Key role in intercepting hostile
communications, and “direction finders” tracking German navy and airships
• Marconi Company entered legal dispute with UK government over unpaid patent royalties in 1920.
• Protracted discussions on six-figure royalty claims: devolved to a private adjudication.
• Marconi Company: discreet deliberations 1922-8 £590,000
• Soon to form Cable & Wireless
Temporary wireless direction-finding station on the cliffs of Hunstanton, Norfolk, c.1915
Image from the Marconi archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
Conclusions on patriotism and profit• Overall: war benefits telecomms innovation & vice versa.
Fewer deaths and less profit than munitions manufacture.
• How to commemorate Fuller & Marconi for their innovations? (compared to Moseley who paid the highest price in WW1… )
• Paid more than cost of developing their inventions: was warfare for them just profit by other means? (c.f. Clausewitz)
• The counterfactual of opportunity cost: Fuller & Marconi could have profited more e.g. selling to both sides in the war.
• Devoted to country’s needs while also profiting in process: no incompatibility – but patriotism a matter of degree.
Epilogue (1): International Element• So can our conclusions about British patriotism and profit and
the need for wartime scientific research be extended further?• August 1916: Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the US Navy,
gave a welcoming speech to members of the Naval Consulting Board including Thomas Edison.
• Daniels noted that at the outbreak of World War One the many nations involved lacked one thing essential to war:– “…the utilization of the inventive, engineering and scientific talent,
and the ability to readily mobilize the industries of the country to national defense [sic]. Trained men were called from munitions plants and machine shops to serve in the trenches. It required reverses to teach the folly of putting men skilled in the making of shells to carrying guns...”
Thomas A. Edison Papers, Part V: Special Collection Series, Naval Consulting Board, 19 September 1916
Epilogue (2): Who profits?• Historian Bill Astore: “World War I was for making the world
“safe for democracy” - for global American business interests • But perhaps innovators and commerce are not the only ones
to profit from war – do we all benefit from wartime developments? Should we worry if we do?
• Technology developed during wartime have civilian application in peace, e.g. radio telephony developed by RFC/ RAF and Marconi Company during World War One contributes to development of broadcast radio in the early 1920s.
• Final Conclusion: Successful relationship between scientific research & military application lays the groundwork for World War Two “Big Science”: A-bomb, radar, code-breaking etc.
Thank you!
w: http://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat/
@WWITelecomms / @lizbruton