New Media, 1740-1915

by Lisa Gitelman (editor), Geoffrey B. Pingree (Editor)

Reminding us that all media were once new, this book challenges the notion that to study new media is to study exclusively today's new media. Examining a variety of media in their historic contexts, it explores those moments of transition when new media were not yet fully defined and their significance was still in flux. Examples range from familiar devices such as the telephone and phonograph to unfamiliar curiosities such as the physiognotrace and the zograscope. Moving beyond the story of technological innovation, the book considers emergent media as sites of ongoing cultural exchange. It considers how habits and structures of communication can frame a collective sense of public and private and how they inform our apprehensions of the "real." By recovering different (and past) senses of media in transition, New Media, 1740-1915 promises to deepen our historical understanding of all media and thus to sharpen our critical awareness of how they acquire their meaning and power.

ContributorsWendy Bellion, Erin C. Blake, Patricia Crain, Ellen Gruber Garvey, Lisa Gitelman, Geoffrey B. Pingree, Gregory Radick, Laura Burd Schiavo, Katherine Stubbs, Diane Zimmerman Umble, Paul Young.

Genres: History

305 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Lisa Gitelman is Professor of English and of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. She is the author of Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents, Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture and Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era and the editor of "Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron and New Media, 1740–1915.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's nothing to dislike about the motivation for this book. In examining the lives of old media when they were new, it self-consciously puts itself in Carolyn Marvin's territory of historical scholarship. Some of the contributions hold up to this standard quite nicely, others don't successfully evoke the period as well as she does. Similarly, the theoretical bent of many of these essays sometimes seems overwrought. While most of the authors self-consciously avoid making inappropriate comparisons between old and new technologies, their theoretical reach is nonetheless marred by attempts to suggest that the contemporary significances of the technologies they write on. For instance, the suggestion that that the physiognotrace (actually a word) helped citizens to imagine themselves as Jeffersonian democratic subjects strikes me as absurd, and none of the archival evidence was significant enough to convince me otherwise. Essays by Lisa Gitelman, Paul Young, and Ellen Gruber Garvey (though the latter makes some uncomfortable comparisons between web browsers and scrapbooks) are worthwhile. Everything else I could take or leave.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing collection of essays on various medias of communication. I read several chapters relating to early optical telegraphy as it relates to pedagogy, zograscopes and their use in polite society, and the rift caused in Menonite and Amish communities over the use of the telephone. Very fun historical reads, especially if you are interested in communication history. Can't vouch for all of the contributor's writing but the few I read were engrossing and the remaining chapters were tantalizing...Now, if only there were more time...

[Pinar G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought to learn about Communication history when I bought this book. Disappointed but it still has interesting pieces, check out the articles first.