Innovating in Combat: telecommunications and intellectual property in the First World War

As the centenary of the First World War approaches we can no longer draw upon the testimony of first-hand witnesses. Historians now more than ever need to scrutinise anew primary sources to develop fresh interpretations. This project considers in unprecedented depth the crucial role of innovative telecommunications in battlefront strategy, a topic previously devolved solely to signals historians. Hitherto, little scholarly attention has been paid to the (open or secret) patenting of such new communications devices, their strategic value in combat, or the sometimes enormous profits they generated.

The capacity of military units to communicate securely, i.e. without interception, has underpinned successful combat strategy for centuries, and the First World War was no exception. The vulnerability of telecommunications was well illustrated by the British interception of the Zimmerman telegram from Germany in 1917. Yet in contrast to the popular Second World War stories of Bletchley Park's interception and breaking of Enigma codes, these issues have not been systematically explored in any public or academic history of First World War Britain. While recent historians (such as Gary Sheffield) have certainly reasserted the inventiveness and adaptability of the British forces during the First World War, such revisionist accounts have not extended to the inventive production and use of telecommunications, nor to the issues of intellectual property that they involved. A fortiori these issues are not covered in any military or civilian museum exhibits, nor in extant online teaching resources.

Inroads have recently been made, however, by Gooday's AHRC project (2007-10) 'Owning and Disowning Invention' in understanding how intellectual property systems operated in the First World War. This Follow-On project will work in collaboration with the Oxford Museum of History of Science, and three project partners (Institution of Engineering and Technology, Porthcurno Telegraph Museum and BT Archives) to create public-facing resources on four specific themes:

i) battle strategy in the First World War at times depended in important ways both on innovative (if risky) use of civilian-originated telecommunications (telegraph, telephone, radio) and on new combat-inspired technologies such as the Fullerphone, developed in 1915-16, in order accomplish secure communications in the face of innovative enemy techniques of interception.

ii) patterns of innovation in First World War telecommunications need to be understood within the patent system for managing intellectual property rights. These extend both to the rights of the state over those of civilian and military patentees, and the pressure put on the management of that system by the priorities of war. Only by this means can we understand how the Fullerphone was produced for the British and other armies as the subject of a secret patent in 1916.

iii) there was a subtly differentiated range of rewards available for militarily useful innovations in telecommunications: patent royalties, government purchase, promotion, medals or post hoc awards from the Royal Commission etc. The Fullerphone acts once again as an ideal case study, since most of such rewards were accrued by its inventor, Algernon Clement Fuller.

iv) after the Great War difficult questions arose regarding the legitimate profit from wartime manufacture. The project resources focus on an important yet little studied case: the Marconi company's long legal dispute with the State over mass wartime 'infringement' of its wireless telegraphy patent rights, the large settlement from which funded the creation of the Cable and Wireless Co.

This proposal is modelled on the PI's recent AHRC-funded Knowledge Transfer Project partnered with the Thackray Museum in Leeds, "Patently Innovative: Re-interpreting the history of industrial medicine" AH/I027339/1, also drawing on 'Owning and Disowning Invention'.

The principal beneficiaries from this follow-on project include eight distinctive groups:

Telecommunications-focused and other museums that hold WW1 materials
Curators and exhibition designers will have available to them downloadable materials on telegraphy, telephony and wireless radio, as well as advice from the PI, Co-I and PR on how to develop and apply these resources in preparation for their First World War commemorative exhibits. At the same time this project will give them the opportunity to make full use of communications equipment in a way that is much more intriguing - thanks to contemporary concerns about communications/electronics/computing companies' use and abuse of intellectual property - than standard hardware focussed narratives of war time communication.

Archives holding collections relating to telecommunications in the First World War
They will have select materials digitized and interpreted ready for them to use in any developing plans for a First World War Centenary as well as receiving advice from the PI, Co-I and PR on how to develop and apply these resources in preparation for First World War commemorative exhibits.

Secondary education sectors - teachers of physics/technology and of history
Teachers will be able to download resources tuned to their needs, enabling them to adopt fresh perspectives in classroom activities. While current secondary curriculum approaches are under reconsideration, at present Key Stage 3 and 4 European and World History address the impact of significant political, social, cultural, religious, technological and/or economic developments and events on past European and world societies, as well as the changing nature of conflict and cooperation between countries and peoples and the lasting impact of war including the nature and impact of the two world wars.

School pupils
They will benefit from being able to use their own expertise in telecommunications (mobile phones, IPads etc) to interpret key aspects of First World War history that go beyond issues of death and brutal injury and consider how developments on the front line are continuations of, and interacting with, changes in telecommunications technologies in the civilian world.

Amateur/Hobbyist historians of First World War
The project will help them better understand the work of those involved in military telecommunications during the First world War and will also bring to light characters of interest who were involved in patenting or other inventive activities.

Community groups specializing in First World War studies. A key example here is the project AH/J013315/1 "Legacies of War 1914-18/2014-18" led by Professor Alison Fell at the University of Leeds, and on which Graeme Gooday was a co-applicant. This project works with local community groups in Leeds to explore the legacy of the First World War in civic civilian contexts, and groups for this project will be involved in commenting on the publicly-accessible resources for this new proposed follow-on project.

Telecommunications companies
They will benefit by being able to demonstrate the decisive yet non-lethal contribution of their specialist mode of technologies to a major global conflict. This research will also help them adopt a more informed stance towards contemporary issues of intellectual property and state funded research/manufacture of telecommunications, particularly in times of war.

Policy makers on Intellectual Property (IP)
Future policy makers within government, the forces or bodies such as the Intellectual Property Office will benefit by being able to inform their current or future research policies/contracts with historical examples of how crucial IP issues and their flexible strategic management have been in times of war as in peace time. For example, the German use of telephony unconstrained in its development by any Bell patent enabled strong military expertise to emerge in hardware and interception.