Jacob Ward, Bodleian Libraries Byrne-Bussey Marconi Fellow, Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL, gives the 2018 Marconi lecture.
What happened to wireless?
Loading Video...
The term 'wireless' has very different meanings today to what it meant in the early twentieth century. Today, it connotes mobility, flexibility, instantaneity, whereas previously it has connoted fixity - 'the' wireless - and spirituality, with transmitting invisible signals through the ether.
In this lecture, Jacob Ward explores what happened to 'wireless' in between these two meanings, from after World War II to the birth of the new wireless in the 1980s and 1990s, by exploring the imagination and imagery associated with wireless communications by its biggest proponents: the Marconi Companies.
People:
Oxford Unit:
Keywords:
More in this Series...
The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford is the largest university library system in the United Kingdom. It includes the principal University library - the Bodleian Library - which has been a legal deposit library for 400 years; as well as 28 other libraries across Oxford including major research libraries and faculty, department and institute libraries. Together, the Libraries hold more than 12 million printed items, over 80,000 e-journals and outstanding special collections...
Subscribe
Download Media
- Video (1.3 GB)