Around 1900, the telephone opened up entirely new possibilities for communicating over long distances. This unfamiliar medium intensified both practical and academic engagement with speech, hearing and the conditions of understanding. "Kommunikationsarbeit in Telefonzentralen" traces this history, bringing neglected figures in the field of telephone switching into focus. At the beginning of the 20th century, telephone connections between people and nationally organised telephone networks were still made manually, mostly by young women working in telephone exchanges. They also taught people how to use the new communication technology. The work of telephone operators at this central interface was studied by various academic disciplines. But it was not only the sciences; telephone administrations and the telephone operators themselves also observed, optimised and regulated the physical interaction of human operators with their technologised working environment, as well as their verbal interaction with customers. In doing so, they all turned the telephone exchange into their testing ground, where they worked towards a genuinely pragmatic and praxeological understanding of language and communication.

This book is included in DOAB.