HOW WELL DO INVENTORS UNDERSTAND THE CULTURAL CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR INVENTIONS? A STUDY OF: SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE AND THE TELEGRAPH, THOMAS ALVA EDISON AND THE PHONOGRAPH, AND ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL AND THE TELEPHONE

This study compared the expectations three inventors had for their inventions with the consequences that actually ensued. Since the field of media ecology focuses on communications technologies, the telegraph, phonograph, and telephone and their inventors: Samuel Finley Breese Morse, Thomas Alva Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell became the subjects of this study.;Edison foresaw the phonograph's chief use as a businessman's tool, a replacement for the letter. As it retained speech, he believed it would lead to the serious weighing of thought before utterance. However, much to its inventor's chagrin, the phonograph's destiny was to be a medium of musical entertainment. As such, it helped form popular music and create public taste. It became the first medium of mass entertainment enjoyed within the home, setting the stage for radio and later television.;Bell understood the telephone would function as a one-to-one verbal linkage system in both the business and domestic realms. A teacher of the deaf with life-long interests in communication, Bell appropriately invented a device that had the potential to connect anyone who could speak and hear with anyone else with such powers. Yet ironically, throughout his lifetime, telephone operations served to restrict as much as to extend communication. Perhaps for this reason, Bell retired from telephony soon after the company which bore his name was established.;This study did not satisfactorily answer the question of whether inventors understand the cultural consequences of their inventions. What it did demonstrate, however, was that inventors have no control over their inventions' destinies. This led to the conclusion that technological assessment requires a perspective other than focusing upon the wishes and expectations of individuals. Discovering reasons a technology is used in the ways it is would be more heuristic. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.);Morse hoped and expected his invention would bring about universal peace. He assumed once distance no longer posed an obstacle to communication, all misunderstanding and disagreement would cease. While the telegraph did not bring about the peace Morse predicted, it did bring information to whoever had access to it, directly or indirectly. In the process, it succeeded in transforming the press and creating the phenomenon of "news" as we know it today along with a public demand for a steady flow of varied information.