Contenu du sommaire : Histoire des télécoms

Electric telegraphy develops rapidly in France between 1850 and 1880, situating itself at the world's best level because of the importance of its network as well as its innovation capacity. The same isn't true concerning the telephone. A mediocre network and a near-total dependency upon foreign patents, such is the acknowledgment at the shift of the century. To explain such a contrast, we propose to take into account the concertaining of two logics: one stemming from a group of engineers who through a practice closely related to what we could call today research and development, will play a decisive role in telegraphy's expansion ; and an administrative one, that comes from the postal service direction who will carry to an end the merging project of the postal and telegraph administrations, as well as the reduction of this group of engineers who represent a congruent portion. The birth of the telegraphy college and ten years later its removal in favour of the professional college of the P. and T., constitute the markers of this confrontation.

The knowledge we have on the history of the telephone's first years has been renewed by the work conducted during the seventies by Yves Stourdze. Since then, various monographies, of which a synthesis is proposed her, have enabled a retracement of a real geography of this technical development and of the birth of the network notion. Have the emergence and the freezing of the new uses of the telephone followed a specific French model ? What was the role played by consular organisms as well as the notables ? The setting up of new surveys insure today a more global answer to these questions.

Edison's legend deserves being shown in the light of his constant and miscallaneous work. Leaving the mechanical industry, in which he had deposited a first patent as from 1868 on a voting machine, Edison invents later on, in 1877, a telegraphic answering machine, constructing the following year the first phonograph. The study of his records reveals a reserch method based on the abundunce of notes, illustrations, and the setting up of work groups charged of each technical development. The artical is illustrated by Edison's and his partners sketches.

The development of the parisian telephone system at the begining of the century reflects the prevailing professional uses of the telephone. Domestic use of this system still being quite rare, even in the upper social classes. The telephone density in Paris coincided with the areas of trade and light industry. With time, it's apparent that the most desirable residential areas were badly serviced by the telephone system, compared to the real parisian centre of the time, the area of the right bank containing the Opera, the Bourse, Hotel de Ville and a stretch of the Canal Saint-Martin.

Since the inter-war period, the United States obtained their indépendance from the British. The second conflict introduced a period of renewed ambition, backed by the state, and concerned about the universality of the technical solutions applied. On the very liberal base of the « free flow of information » was built an empire on the tryptic networks, material, program industry. This hegemony was going to be doubted about as from the seventies, where while staying at the head of the communications market the United States had to adapt to the claims of the third world as well as to those of the economic emergence of Europe into this long protected area.

The state interference in Belgium in the telecommunication sector was formed by a political, economical, social and geopolitical context. During the three technological waves which succeeded each other in the XlXth century (optical telegraphs, electric telegraphs and the telephone), the state role developed from that of being a simple « guard » of this section, to being an economical participant disposing of a monopoly on the telecommunication exploitation, thanks to which the state must assure a « public service ». In the XlXth century, this meant using a tool of the crossed subvention to spread geographicly the networks and decrease the rates : the public service being over all a commercial and industrial service.

Some technologies cause deep changes in the organizations that use them. During the past years, data processing has become an omnipresent tool in firms as well as in administrations. It introduced a chain of transformations in peoples' behaviour, in the management methods and in the organizations' purposes. It also created a new awareness of the information social status. Through the experience acquired by data processing professionals in some important french administrations, we present an analysis of the principal traits of this change.