Simone Müller-Pohl: “By Atlantic Telegraph” A Study on Weltcommunication in the 19th Century

Abstract: The article explores aspects of Weltcommunication in the nineteenth century using the Atlantic telegraph connection as a case study. In a first step, it focuses on submarine telegraphs as a medium of communication, in a second step it deals with the telegraph as carriers of world news that fed a bourgeois public sphere. The article argues that communication “by Atlantic cable” presented itself as an elitist undertaking. Further on, considering the dispersion of world news a lengthy process of adaptation on “what is news?” was necessary before communication had caught up with its technology. Thus stages of a globalization of communication can be marked.