Invisible Empire: A History of the telecommunications industry in Canada, 1846-1956

Invisible Empire: A History of the telecommunications industry in Canada, 1846-1956
ISBN-10
0773568441
ISBN-13
9780773568440
Category
Technology & Engineering
Pages
320
Language
English
Published
2001-07-10
Publisher
McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Author
Jean-Guy Rens

Description

It is impossible to understand Canada without looking at the history and development of its telecommunications industry. In the nineteenth century Canada was the only country in the world constructed on the basis of technology - first the railway and, in its shadow, telegraphy. In the 1930s this technological nationalism came of age and telecommunications became Canada's "national" technology. The Invisible Empire provides the first overview of Canadian telecommunications, from the laying of the first telegraph line between Toronto and Hamilton in 1846 to the separation between Nortel - then known as Northern Electric - and the American Bell System in 1956. Rens shows us that Louis Riel was beaten as much by telegraphy as by the Canadian army, and how Bell Canada - then known as Bell Telephone - escaped nationalization by Sir Wilfrid Laurier's government. He follows the construction of the first trans-Canadian telephone line in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s and explains why, in the context of the Cold War, Canada built an electronic Great Wall of China in the far North. Rens examines the context that allowed the telecommunications industry to take hold so successfully in Canada and explores how the industry grew so quickly and managed to escape American domination. He situates Canadian accomplishments in telecommunications by comparing them with those of other countries.

Other editions

Similar books

  • Animal Sciences: The Biology, Care, and Production of Domestic Animals, Fourth Edition
    By John R. Campbell, M. Douglas Kenealy, Karen L. Campbell

    Timberlake claimed in 1980 that a fundamental problem with Singer's work is the lack of an adequate definition of suffering ...

  • Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate
    By Laura Lengnick

    3. D. Layne. 2013. Tree Fruit: Protecting Your Investment. American/Western Fruit Grower, September/October. 4. R. Snyder and J. Melu-Abreu. 2005. Frost ...

  • Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies
    By Stefanos Zenios, Josh Makower, Paul Yock

    At that time, these were in the low $10s of millions. ... be a good partner going forward, even though it takes longer to get the deal done," offered Chess.

  • Advanced Signal Processing: A Concise Guide
    By Amir-Homayoon Najmi, Todd Moon

    [ 59 ] S. Kotz , T. J. Kozubowski , and K. Podgorski , The Laplace ... valued signal processing : The proper way to deal with impropriety , ” IEEE Trans .

  • Resources for Technical Communication
    By Pearson Education, Pearson Education Staff, David P Pearson Education

    Some documents are annotated; some are left without annotations to provide more flexibility for instructors. This booklet can be packaged at no additional cost with any Longman title in technical communication.

  • Chemistry: An Introduction to General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry; Chemistry Study Pack Version 2.0 CD-ROM; The Chemistry of Life CD-ROM;...
    By Karen C. Timberlake

    Chemistry: An Introduction to General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry; Chemistry Study Pack Version 2.0 CD-ROM; The Chemistry of Life CD-ROM;...

  • Poultry Science: Fifth Edition
    By Colin G. Scanes, Karen D. Christensen

    The emission rates for ammonia (Casey et al., 2006): • Layers: 116 g NH3 per AU (AU or animal unit or 500 kg). • Broilers: 135 g NH3 per AU (AU or animal unit or 500 kg). Emission rates in different reports vary from less than either 10 ...

  • Solid State Materials Chemistry
    By Patrick M. Woodward, Pavel Karen, John S. O. Evans

    [45] B.F. Hoskins, R. Robson, “Design and construction of a new class of scaffolding-like materials comprising infinite polymeric frameworks of 3D-linked molecular rods. A reappraisal of the zinc cyanide and cadmium cyanide structures ...

  • Abbreviations Dictionary
    By Dean A. Stahl, Karen Landen

    ... Tallest Mountain Mount Robson—12,972 feet or 3,954 meters—in the Canadian Rockies Canada's Westernmost City Dawson, Yukon Canada's Westernmost Point in Yukon Territory just east of Alaska's Demarcation Point Canary Islands' Largest ...

  • Agriculture: A Very Short Introduction
    By Paul Brassley, Richard Soffe

    ACCOUNTING Christopher Nobes ADVERTISING Winston Fletcher AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION Eddie S. Glaude Jr AFRICAN HISTORY ... Hugh Bowden ALGEBRA Peter M. Higgins AMERICAN HISTORY Paul S. Boyer AMERICAN IMMIGRATION David A. Gerber AMERICAN ...