Imperial Wireless, the British Post Office, and Anglo-Dominion and India relations c.1900-1930
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study revises our understanding of Imperial Wireless, a network of wireless telegraph stations developed from 1900 to 1930. It argues for the importance of the British Post Office’s role in influencing the scheme’s development. This occurred progressively as the Post Office developed its own conception of how Imperial Wireless should work which overflowed into the functioning of wider imperial communication. Whilst the reasons for this were kept general, with a focus on Britain, the Post Office’s efforts became about ensuring its own role in the field. This occurred because the Post Office became convinced they had a vital role to play. Crucially, this relied on a very specific view of British imperialism; a limited emphasis on its importance that focused on the significance of imperial autonomy. This came about as a means to limit factors that might impinge on the Post Office’s policies. It resulted in consistent Post Office led efforts to move the scheme away from substantial co-ordination of empire wide approaches to problems. It was one view of the relationship of British imperialism to communication that clashed with others throughout the scheme’s development. It was only when a more typical view of British imperialism, focusing on a wider empire solution to the scheme, during the 1928/29 Cable and Wireless merger that the Post Office’s influence collapsed. In analysing this, this thesis provides a sorely lacking detailed understanding of Imperial Wireless development along with reassessing the impact of wider related factors such as the Marconi Scandal, the First World War and technological development. Moreover, it provides an alternative perspective on an overtly imperial endeavour which masks deeper complexity. It contributes another nuance to our understanding of the complexities of British imperialism and more specifically the role of communication technology within it.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".