Innovation in Large Technical Systems: the Case of Telecommunications I @bullet» 1. Introduction

Drawing upon a framework of analysis developed by Thomas Hughes, this paper examines the development of the telecommunications network as a large technical system, dealing with the ways in which innovation is behind the rate and direction of system growth. It focuses on developments in the USA and in Europe since the 1960s in a period when a cluster of radical innovations changed the traditional technical and institutional setup of the telephone network. The paper argues that an explanation of innovation in large technical systems'has to account for the economic drive to realize economies of scale and. scope. However, a new concept of economy of system is required to explain the reductions in cost which stem from innovations that improve the control of traffic, or load, through the telecommunications network and other large technical systems. The argument of the paper is not that economic forces take priority over issues of social and political choice but, rather, that a framework is required which accounts far the ways in which technology and economics mix with politics in the development of telecommunications and other large systems. 1 An emerging body of literature has contributed much to an explanation of the process of innovation within large technical systems, such as electric power, t technical, economic and political factors at work within large technical systems which initiate innovative activity in particular directions. Drawing 1 upon concepts developed by Thomas P Hughes (1983, 1987, 1992), the ^ historian of technology who has pioneered research into electric power and • I other large technical systems, the objective of this paper is to present a new 2 '