Page 271 - Communication Theory and Research

McQuail(EJC)-3281-19.qxd 8/16/2005 12:02 PM Page 256

256 Communication Theory & Research
that situation that one of the independent telephone companies in Indiana called
a hearing of the Indiana Public Service Commission about acceptable uses of the
telephone. The company objected to women’s uses of the telephone in particular:
women talked for long periods on the telephone about supposedly trivial mat-
ters and this was not what the medium was meant for, so the company claimed
(Rakow, 1988). The telephone had indeed been propagated by the burgeoning
industry as a medium for practical management and household purposes;
businessmen were the first target groups. Exhibits, telephone vendors and
advertisements in trade journals all claimed that the telephone would ‘increase
efficiency, save time, and impress customers’ (Fischer, 1992: 66). As far as women
were addressed in this early period, the business of the household was empha-
sized: ‘the telephone could help the affluent household manager to accomplish
her task’ (Fischer, 1992: 67). Many women, however, had a completely different
appreciation of the new medium and used it for ‘social purposes’: keeping in
touch with family and friends, exchanging personal experiences and the latest
community news, and – in the more rural areas – using it as a companion in
lonely times. Industry leaders and professionals objected to such uses of the tele-
phone. They considered chatting on the telephone as ‘one more female foolish-
ness’ (Fischer, 1992: 231). In trade journals and advertisements ‘talkative women
and their frivolous electrical conversations about inconsequential personal sub-
jects were contrasted with the efficient task-oriented, worldly talk of business
and professional men’ (Marvin, 1988: 23). Complaints were issued in news-
papers about ‘women’s habits of talking on the phone for “futile motives”’ (Martin,
1988: 96). [...]
Nowadays it is hard to imagine the telephone as anything else then a medium
to maintain social contact. It is therefore not a far-fetched conclusion to say that
‘women subscribers were largely responsible for the development of a culture of
the telephone’ (Martin, 1991: 171, quoted in Fischer, 1992: 236), as we know it today.
The gender codes of the computer emerged quite differently and turn the light
to another historical scene, set in mid-19th-century, upperclass England. At a
dinner party hosted by Mary Somerville, a woman whose mathematical work
was used at Cambridge, one of the people attending was Charles Babbage who
played a leading role in the scientific and technical development of the period.
Nowadays he is credited with having developed the first calculator and the first
blueprint for a computer. At the dinner party, he told his audience about a
machine he had built – the Difference Engine – which was capable of making
various calculations and tables. Among the attentive listeners were Lady Byron
and her 18-year-old daughter, Ada. Lady Byron was a gifted mathematician her-
self and known in high society as the Princess of Parallelograms. Her daughter
definitively inherited her intellectual gifts and had at the age of 13 produced a
design for a flying machine. Ada and her mother were fascinated by Babbage’s
ideas and went to see the Difference Engine in his studio. One of the observers
of that scene remembers ‘Miss Byron, young as she was, understood its work-
ings, and saw the great beauty of its invention’ (Moore, 1977: 44, quoted in Plant,
1998: 47). [...]
Ada became an outspoken advocate of Babbage’s invention. She translated an
Italian paper about the Engine and added her own extensive notes to it, which