elop a phone
system more suited to Stalinist purposes.)

France, with its tradition of rational centralized government, had
fought bitterly even against the electric telegraph, which seemed to
the French entirely too anarchical and frivolous. For decades,
nineteenth-century France communicated via the "visual telegraph," a
nation-spanning, government-owned semaphore system of huge stone towers
that signalled from hilltops, across vast distances, with big
windmill-like arms. In 1846, one Dr. Barbay, a semaphore enthusiast,
memorably uttered an early version of what might be called "the
security expert's argument" against the open media.

"No, the electric telegraph is not a sound invention. It will always
be at the mercy of the slightest disruption, wild youths, drunkards,
bums, etc.... The electric telegraph meets those destructive elements
with only a few meters of wire over which supervision is impossible. A
single man could, without being seen, cut the telegraph wires leading
to Paris, and in twenty-four hours cut in ten different places the
wires of the same line, without being arrested. The visual telegraph,
on the contrary, has its towers, its high walls, its gates well-guarded
from inside by strong armed men. Yes, I declare, substitution of the
electric telegraph for the visual one is a dreadful measure, a truly
idiotic act."

Dr. Barbay and his high-security stone machines were eventually
unsuccessful, but his argument--that communication exists for the
safety and convenience of the state, and must be carefully protected
from the wild boys and the gutter rabble who might want to crash the
system--would be heard again and again.

When the French telephone system finally did arrive, its snarled
inadequacy was to be notorious. Devotees of the American Bell System
often recommended a trip to France, for skeptics.

In Edwardian Britain, issues of class and privacy were a ball-and-chain
for telephonic progress. It was considered outrageous that anyone--any
wild fool off the street--could simply barge bellowing into one's
office or home, preceded only by the ringing of a telephone bell. In
Britain, phones were tolerated for the use of business, but private
phones tended be stuffed away into closets, smoking rooms, or servants'
quarters. Telephone operators were resented in Britain because they
did not seem to "know their place." And no one of breeding would print
a telephone number on a business card