Ciudad e innovación: la formación de los sistemas telefónicos urbanos en Europa (1877-1900)

Abstract

Invented by A. G. Bell in 1876, telephone spread over the world in the last years of the XIXth century. Economic, cultural and institutional variablesacted, among others, in a non linear complex way in such a world spread. The present article analyses the role of cities in this process. The main purpose of the article is to provide elements to the debate engaged by other disciplines from a historical perspective. In order to do this, it begins by bringing on the tapis some terms of the debate. After that it studies the relationship between diverse variables of urban fact and telephone spread in Europe. As a conclusion, it underlines that the urban expansion of the telephone was neither a simple result of the initial size of cities nor of the quantitative growth of inhabitants. Factors like regimes of concessions, tariffs and annexed services had an undoubtedly role.