The United States, Radio Architecture, and Global Space, 1933--1951

This doctoral research project is the first study to identify and investigate the engineering basis for the global radio communications network that succeeded telegraphy and telephony and preceded satellites. Rather than concentrating on the hardware of this network, it focuses on the genealogy of conditions for the less tangible but arguably more significant system of communications circuits and radio frequencies that constituted it, and the ionospheric investigation that shaped their form. Its approach to realizing radio infrastructure: linking the ionosphere, ionospheric research, and the planning and negotiation of frequency allocation is unheralded. Where it argues that provision for this infrastructure put the United States at the centre of a global process of integration, it explains how radio space became a zone of contestation in the Cold War, and a condition in the emergency of globality.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Wedge, John

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lillian Hoddeson

• History, United States

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3160970

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/84664