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

随着第一次世界大战一百周年的临近，我们不能再依靠第一手证人的证词。历史学家现在比以往任何时候都更需要仔细研究新的原始资料，以形成新的解释。该项目以前所未有的深度考虑了创新电信在前线战略中的关键作用，这是一个以前仅由信号历史学家负责的主题。迄今为止，学术界很少关注（公开的或秘密的）这些新型通信设备的专利，它们在战斗中的战略价值，或者它们产生的有时巨大的利润。几个世纪以来，军事单位安全通信（即不被拦截）的能力一直是成功作战战略的基础，第一次世界大战也不例外。1917年，英国截获了来自德国的齐默尔曼电报，这充分说明了电信的脆弱性。然而，与流行的二战布莱切利公园截获和破译恩尼格玛密码的故事相比，这些问题在第一次世界大战英国的任何公共或学术历史中都没有被系统地探讨过。虽然最近的历史学家（如加里·谢菲尔德）肯定重申了英国军队在第一次世界大战期间的创造力和适应性，但这种修正主义的描述并没有延伸到创造性的生产和电信的使用，也没有延伸到它们所涉及的知识产权问题。更重要的是，这些问题在任何军事或民用博物馆展览中都没有涉及，也没有在现有的在线教学资源中。然而，最近Gooday的AHRC项目（2007-10）“拥有和否认发明”在理解第一次世界大战中知识产权制度如何运作方面取得了进展。这个后续项目将与牛津科学史博物馆和三个项目合作伙伴（工程技术研究所、波特科诺电报博物馆和英国电信档案馆）合作，就四个具体主题创建面向公众的资源：i)第一次世界大战中的战斗战略有时在重要方面依赖于创新（如果有风险）使用民用电信（电报，电话，无线电）和新的战斗灵感技术，如1915年至1916年开发的Fullerphone，以便在面对创新的敌人拦截技术时实现安全通信。ii)需要在管理知识产权的专利制度中理解第一次世界大战电信的创新模式。这既涉及到国家对民用和军用专利持有者的权利，也涉及到战争优先级给该系统管理带来的压力。只有通过这种方式，我们才能理解富勒手机是如何在1916年作为一项秘密专利的主题为英国和其他军队生产的。（三）对电信领域军事用途创新的奖励范围有细微差别：专利使用费、政府采购、晋升、奖章或皇家委员会的事后奖励等。富勒手机再一次成为了一个理想的研究案例，因为大部分这样的奖励都是由它的发明者阿尔杰农·克莱门特·富勒（Algernon Clement Fuller）积累的。第一次世界大战之后，关于战时制造业的合法利润出现了一些难题。项目资源集中在一个重要但很少被研究的案例上：马可尼公司与国家就战时大规模“侵犯”其无线电报专利权的长期法律纠纷，这笔巨额和解为有线和无线公司的成立提供了资金。该提案以PI最近与利兹萨克雷博物馆合作的ahrc资助的知识转移项目为模型，“专利创新：重新解释工业医学的历史”AH/I027339/1，也借鉴了“拥有和否认发明”。

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'.