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Communication
Technology
Update and
Fundamentals
16th Edition
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http:/taylorandfrancis.com
Communication
Technology
Update and
Fundamentals
16th Edition
Editors
August E. Grant
Jennifer H. Meadows
In association with Technology Futures, Inc.
ROUTLEDGE

Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group

NEW YORK AND LONDON

Editors:
August E. Grant
Jennifer H. Meadows

Technology Futures, Inc.

Production & Graphics Editor:
Helen Mary V. Marek

Publisher: Ross Wagenhofer

Editorial Assistant: Nicole Salazar
Production Editor: Sian Cahill
Marketing Manager: Lynsey Nurthen

Sixteenth edition published 2018

by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

The right of August Grant and Jennifer Meadows to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only
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Publisher’s note: This book has been prepared from camera‐ready copy provided by the editors. Typeset in
Palatino Linotype by H. M. V. Marek, Technology Futures, Inc.

[First edition published by Technology Futures, Inc. 1992]

[Fifteenth edition published by Focal Press 2016]

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data.

CIP data has been applied for.

HB: 9781138571334
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 toc
Table of Contents
Preface vii

I Fundamentals ix
1 The Communication Technology Ecosystem, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 1
2 A History of Communication Technology, Yicheng Zhu, M.A. 9
3 Understanding Communication Technologies, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 25
4 The Structure of the Communication Industries, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 37
5 Communication Policy & Technology, Lon Berquist, M.A. 49

II Electronic Mass Media 65

6 Digital Television & Video, Peter B. Seel, Ph.D. 67
7 Multichannel Television Services, Paul Driscoll, Ph.D. & Michel Dupagne, Ph.D. 77
8 Radio & Digital Audio, Heidi D. Blossom, Ph.D. 97
9 Digital Signage, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 107
10 Cinema Technologies, Michael R. Ogden, Ph.D. 117

III Computers & Consumer Electronics 149

11 Computers, Glenda Alvarado, Ph.D. 151
12 Internet of Things (IoT), Jeffrey S. Wilkinson, Ph.D. 159
13 Automotive Telematics, Denise Belafonte‐Young, M.F.A. 169
14 Video Games, Isaac D. Pletcher, M.F.A. 179

v
Table of Contents

15 Virtual & Augmented Reality, Rebecca Ormond, M.F.A. 189

16 Home Video, Matthew J. Haught, Ph.D. 199
17 Digital Imaging & Photography, Michael Scott Sheerin, M.S. 207
18 eHealth, Heidi D. Blossom, Ph.D. & Alex Neal, M.A. 219
19 Esports, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. & Max Grubb, Ph.D. 233
20 Ebooks, Steven J. Dick, Ph.D. 241

IV Networking Technologies 251

21 Broadband & Home Networks, John J. Lombardi, Ph.D. 253
22 Telephony, William R. Davie, Ph.D. 271
23 The Internet, Stephanie Bor, Ph.D. & Leila Chelbi, M.M.C. 279
24 Social Media, Rachel A. Stuart, M.A. 291
25 Big Data, Tony R. DeMars, Ph.D. 305

V Conclusions 317
26 Other New Technologies, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 319
27 Your Future & Communication Technologies, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 323

Index 327

Glossary and Updates can be found on the

Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals website
http://www.tfi.com/ctu/

vi
 p
Preface
G reat changes in technology are coming at a faster and faster pace, introducing new opportunities,
challenges, careers, and fields of study at a rate that hasn’t been experienced in human history. Keeping
up with these changes can simultaneously provide amusement and befuddlement, as well as economic
prosperity and ruin.

That’s where you come in. Whether you are trying to plan a lucrative investment or a career in media, or you
simply have to pass a particular class in order to graduate, the field of communication technologies has become
important enough to you that you are investing in the time to read this book. Be warned: the goal of the authors
in this book is to serve all of those needs. To do so, the book starts by explaining the Communication Technology
Ecosystem, then applies this ecosystem as a tool to help you understand each of the technologies presented.

This is the 16th edition of this book, and most of the book is changed from the 15th edition. In addition to
updating every chapter with the latest developments, we have a first‐time chapter exploring eSports (Chapter
19) and a chapter we haven’t seen in more than a decade discussing Virtual Reality (Chapter 15). A few other
chapters, including Video Games (Chapter 14), Home Video (Chapter 16), ebooks (Chapter 19), and Computers
(Chapter 11) have been rewritten from scratch to provide a more contemporary discussion.

One thing shared by all of the contributors to this book is a passion for communication technology. In order
to keep this book as current as possible we asked the authors to work under extremely tight deadlines. Authors
begin working in late 2017, and most chapters were submitted in February or March 2018 with the final details
added in April 2018. Individually, the chapters provide snapshots of the state of the field for individual
technologies, but together they present a broad overview of the role that communication technologies play in our
everyday lives. The efforts of these authors have produced a remarkable compilation, and we thank them for all
their hard work in preparing this volume.

The constant in production of this book is our editor extraordinaire, TFI’s Helen Mary V. Marek, who deftly
handled all production details, moving all 27 chapters from draft to camera‐ready in weeks. Helen Mary also
provided on‐demand graphics production, adding visual elements to help make the content more
understandable. Our editorial and marketing team at Routledge, including Ross Wagenhoffer and Nicole Salazar,
ensured that production and promotion of the book were as smooth as ever.

vii
Preface

We are most grateful to our spouses (and partners in life), Diane Grant and Floyd Meadows for giving us this
month every two years so that we can disappear into a haze of bits, pixels, toner, and topics to render the book
you are reading right now. They know that a strange compulsion arises every two years, with publication of the
book being followed immediately by the satisfaction we get from being part of the process of helping you
understand and apply new communications technologies.

You can keep up with developments on technologies discussed in this book by visiting our companion
website, where we use the same technologies discussed in the book to make sure you have the latest information.
The companion website for the Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals: www.tfi.com/ctu. The
complete Glossary for the book is on the site, where it is much easier to find individual entries than in the paper
version of the book. We have also moved the vast quantity of statistical data on each of the communication
technologies that were formerly printed in Chapter 2 to the site. As always, we will periodically update the
website to supplement the text with new information and links to a wide variety of information available over
the Internet.

Your interest and support is the reason we do this book every two years, and we listen to your suggestions
so that we can improve the book after every edition. You are invited to send us updates for the website, ideas for
new topics, and other contributions that will inform all members of the community. You are invited to
communicate directly with us via email, snail mail, social media, or voice.

Thank you for being part of the CTUF community!

Augie Grant and Jennifer Meadows

April 1, 2018

Augie Grant Jennifer H. Meadows

School of Journalism and Mass Communications Dept. of Media Arts, Design, and Technology
University of South Carolina California State University, Chico
Columbia, SC 29208 Chico, CA 95929‐0504
Phone: 803.777.4464 Phone: 530.898.4775
augie@sc.edu jmeadows@csuchico.edu
Twitter: @augiegrant Twitter: @mediaartsjen

viii
 Section I
Fundamentals

ix
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http:/taylorandfrancis.com
 1

The Communication
Technology Ecosystem
August E. Grant, Ph.D.*

C ommunication technologies are the nervous

system of contemporary society, transmitting
and distributing sensory and control infor‐
mation and interconnecting a myriad of interdepend‐
ent units. These technologies are critical to commerce,
essential to entertainment, and intertwined in our in‐
terpersonal relationships. Because these technologies
are so vitally important, any change in communica‐
tion technologies has the potential to impact virtually
every area of society.
One of the hallmarks of the industrial revolution
was the introduction of new communication technolo‐
gies as mechanisms of control that played an important
role in almost every area of the production and distri‐
bution of manufactured goods (Beniger, 1986). These
communication technologies have evolved throughout
the past two centuries at an increasingly rapid rate.
This evolution shows no signs of slowing, so an under‐
standing of this evolution is vital for any individual
wishing to attain or retain a position in business, gov‐
ernment, or education.
The economic and political challenges faced by the
United States and other countries since the beginning
of the new millennium clearly illustrate the central role
these communication systems play in our society. Just
as the prosperity of the 1990s was credited to advances
in technology, the economic challenges that followed
were linked as well to a major downturn in the technol‐
ogy sector. Today, communication technology is seen
by many as a tool for making more efficient use of a
wide range of resources including time and energy.
Communication technologies play as critical a
part in our private lives as they do in commerce and
control in society. Geographic distances are no longer
barriers to relationships thanks to the bridging power
of communication technologies. We can also be enter‐
tained and informed in ways that were unimaginable
a century ago thanks to these technologies—and they
continue to evolve and change before our eyes.
This text provides a snapshot of the state of tech‐
nologies in our society. The individual chapter au‐
thors have compiled facts and figures from hundreds
of sources to provide the latest information on more
than two dozen communication technologies. Each
discussion explains the roots and evolution, recent de‐
velopments, and current status of the technology as of
mid‐2018. In discussing each technology, we address
them from a systematic perspective, looking at a range
of factors beyond hardware.

*J. Rion McKissick Professor of Journalism, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina (Columbia,
South Carolina).

1
Section I  Fundamentals
The goal is to help you analyze emerging technol‐
ogies and be better able to predict which ones will suc‐
ceed and which ones will fail. That task is more
difficult to achieve than it sounds. Let’s look at an ex‐
ample of how unpredictable technology can be.
The Alphabet Tale
As this book goes to press in mid‐2018, Alphabet,
the parent company of Google, is the most valuable
media company in the world in terms of market capi‐
talization (the total value of all shares of stock held in
the company). To understand how Alphabet attained
that lofty position, we have to go back to the late
1990s, when commercial applications of the Internet
were taking off. There was no question in the minds
of engineers and futurists that the Internet was going
to revolutionize the delivery of information, entertain‐
ment, and commerce. The big question was how it
was going to happen.
Those who saw the Internet as a medium for in‐
formation distribution knew that advertiser support
would be critical to its long‐term financial success.
They knew that they could always find a small group
willing to pay for content, but the majority of people
preferred free content. To become a mass medium
similar to television, newspapers, and magazines, an
Internet advertising industry was needed.
At that time, most Internet advertising was ban‐
ner ads—horizontal display ads that stretched across
most of the screen to attract attention, but took up
very little space on the screen. The problem was that
most people at that time accessed the Internet using
slow, dial‐up connections, so advertisers were limited
in what they could include in these banners to about
a dozen words of text and simple graphics. The dream
among advertisers was to be able to use rich media,
including full‐motion video, audio, animation, and
every other trick that makes television advertising so
successful.
When broadband Internet access started to spread,
advertisers were quick to add rich media to their ban‐
ners, as well as create other types of ads using graphics,
video, and sound. These ads were a little more effec‐
tive, but many Internet users did not like the intrusive
nature of rich media messages.
2
At about the same time, two Stanford students, Ser‐
gey Brin and Larry Page, had developed a new type of
search engine, Google, that ranked results on the basis
of how often content was referred to or linked from
other sites, allowing their computer algorithms to cre‐
ate more robust and relevant search results (in most
cases) than having a staff of people indexing Web con‐
tent. What they needed was a way to pay for the costs
of the servers and other technology.
According to Vise & Malseed (2006), their budget
did not allow the company, then known as Google, to
create and distribute rich media ads. They could do
text ads, but they decided to do them differently from
other Internet advertising, using computer algorithms
to place these small text ads on the search results that
were most likely to give the advertisers results. With
a credit card, anyone could use this “AdWords” ser‐
vice, specifying the search terms they thought should
display their ads, writing the brief ads (less than 100
characters total—just over a dozen words), and even
specifying how much they were willing to pay every
time someone clicked on their ad. Even more revolu‐
tionary, the Google team decided that no one should
have to pay for an ad unless a user clicked on it.
For advertisers, it was as close to a no‐lose propo‐
sition as they could find. Advertisers did not have to
pay unless a person was interested enough to click on
the ad. They could set a budget that Google computers
could follow, and Google provided a control panel for
advertisers that gave a set of measures that was a
dream for anyone trying to make a campaign more ef‐
fective. These measures indicated not only the overall
effectiveness of the ad, but also the effectiveness of
each message, each keyword, and every part of every
campaign.
The result was remarkable. Google’s share of the
search market was not that much greater than the
companies that had held the #1 position earlier, but
Google was making money—lots of money—from
these little text ads. Wall Street investors noticed, and,
once Google went public, investors bid up the stock
price, spurred by increases in revenues and a very
large profit margin. Today, Google’s parent company,
renamed Alphabet, is involved in a number of other
ventures designed to aggregate and deliver content
ranging from text to full‐motion video, but its little
 Chapter 1  The Communication Technology Ecosystem

text ads on its Google search engine are still the pri‐ However, understanding communication technology
mary revenue generator. requires more than just studying the hardware. One of
the characteristics of today’s digital technologies is that
In retrospect, it was easy to see why Google was
most are based upon computer technology, requiring
such a success. Their little text ads were effective be‐
instructions and algorithms more commonly known as
cause of context—they always appeared where they
“software.”
would be the most effective. They were not intrusive,
so people did not mind the ads on Google pages, and In addition to understanding the hardware and soft‐
later on other pages that Google served ads to through ware of the technology, it is just as important to un‐
its “content network.” Plus, advertisers had a degree derstand the content communicated through the
of control, feedback, and accountability that no adver‐ technology system. Some consider the content as an‐
tising medium had ever offered before (Grant & Wil‐ other type of software. Regardless of the terminology
kinson, 2007). used, it is critical to understand that digital technolo‐
gies require a set of instructions (the software) as well
So what lessons should we learn from this story?
as the equipment and content.
Advertisers have their own set of lessons, but there are
a separate set of lessons for those wishing to under‐ Figure 1.1
stand new media. First, no matter how insightful, no
The Communication Technology
Ecosystem
one is ever able to predict whether a technology will
succeed or fail. Second, success can be due as much to
luck as to careful, deliberate planning and investment.
Third, simplicity matters—there are few advertising
messages as simple as the little text ads you see when
doing a Google search.
The Alphabet tale provides an example of the util‐
ity of studying individual companies and industries, so
the focus throughout this book is on individual tech‐
nologies. These individual snapshots, however, com‐
prise a larger mosaic representing the communication
networks that bind individuals together and enable
them to function as a society. No single technology can
be understood without understanding the competing
and complementary technologies and the larger social
environment within which these technologies exist. As Source: A. E. Grant
discussed in the following section, all of these factors
The hardware, software, and content must also be
(and others) have been considered in preparing each
studied within a larger context. Rogers’ (1986) defini‐
chapter through application of the “technology ecosys‐
tion of “communication technology” includes some of
tem.” Following this discussion, an overview of the re‐
these contextual factors, defining it as “the hardware
mainder of the book is presented.
equipment, organizational structures, and social val‐
ues by which individuals collect, process, and ex‐
The Communication change information with other individuals” (p. 2). An

Technology Ecosystem
The most obvious aspect of communication tech‐
nology is the hardware—the physical equipment re‐
lated to the technology. The hardware is the most
tangible part of a technology system, and new technol‐
ogies typically spring from developments in hardware.
even broader range of factors is suggested by Ball‐
Rokeach (1985) in her media system dependency the‐
ory, which suggests that communication media can be
understood by analyzing dependency relations within
and across levels of analysis, including the individual,
organizational, and system levels. Within the system

3
Section I  Fundamentals
level, Ball‐Rokeach identifies three systems for analy‐
sis: the media system, the political system, and the
economic system.
These two approaches have been synthesized into
the “Technology Ecosystem” illustrated in Figure 1.1.
The core of the technology ecosystem consists of the
hardware, software, and content (as previously de‐
fined). Surrounding this core is the organizational in‐
frastructure: the group of organizations involved in
the production and distribution of the technology.
The next level moving outwards is the system level,
including the political, economic, and media systems,
as well as other groups of individuals or organizations
serving a common set of functions in society. Finally,
the individual users of the technology cut across all of
the other areas, providing a focus for understanding
each one. The basic premise of the technology ecosys‐
tem is that all areas of the ecosystem interact and must
be examined in order to understand a technology.
(The technology ecosystem is an elaboration of
the “umbrella perspective” (Grant, 2010) that was ex‐
plicated in earlier editions of this book to illustrate the
elements that need to be studied in order to under‐
stand communication technologies.)
Adding another layer of complexity to each of the
areas of the technology ecosystem is also helpful. In
order to identify the impact that each individual char‐
acteristic of a technology has, the factors within each
area of the ecosystem may be identified as “enabling,”
“limiting,” “motivating,” and “inhibiting” depending
upon the role they play in the technology’s diffusion.
Enabling factors are those that make an application
possible. For example, the fact that the coaxial cable
used to deliver traditional cable television can carry
dozens of channels is an enabling factor at the hard‐
ware level. Similarly, the decision of policy makers to
allocate a portion of the radio frequency spectrum for
cellular telephony is an enabling factor at the system
level (political system). One starting point to use in ex‐
amining any technology is to make a list of the under‐
lying factors from each area of the technology ecosys‐
tem that make the technology possible in the first place.
Limiting factors are the opposite of enabling fac‐
tors; they are those factors that create barriers to the
adoption or impacts of a technology. A great example
4
is related to the cellular telephone illustration in the
previous paragraph. The fact that the policy makers
discussed above initially permitted only two compa‐
nies to offer cellular telephone service in each market
was a system level limitation on that technology. The
later introduction of digital technology made it possi‐
ble for another four companies to compete for mobile
phone service. To a consumer, six telephone compa‐
nies may seem to be more than is needed, but to a
start‐up company wanting to enter the market, this
system‐level factor represents a definite limitation.
Again, it is useful to apply the technology ecosystem
to create a list of factors that limit the adoption, use,
or impacts of any specific communication technology.
Motivating factors are a little more complicated.
They are those factors that provide a reason for the
adoption of a technology. Technologies are not adopted
just because they exist. Rather, individuals, organiza‐
tions, and social systems must have a reason to take ad‐
vantage of a technology. The desire of local telephone
companies for increased profits, combined with the fact
that growth in providing local telephone service is lim‐
ited, is an organizational factor motivating the telcos to
enter the markets for new communication technolo‐
gies. Individual users desiring information more quickly
can be motivated to adopt electronic information tech‐
nologies. If a technology does not have sufficient moti‐
vating factors for its use, it cannot be a success.
Inhibiting factors are the opposite of motivating
ones, providing a disincentive for adoption or use of
a communication technology. An example of an inhib‐
iting factor at the organizational level might be a com‐
pany’s history of bad customer service. Regardless of
how useful a new technology might be, if customers
don’t trust a company, they are not likely to purchase
its products or services. One of the most important in‐
hibiting factors for most new technologies is the cost
to individual users. Each potential user must decide
whether the cost is worth the service, considering
their budget and the number of competing technolo‐
gies. Competition from other technologies is one of
the biggest barriers any new (or existing) technology
faces. Any factor that works against the success of a
technology can be considered an inhibiting factor. As
you might guess, there are usually more inhibiting
factors for most technologies than motivating ones.
And if the motivating factors are more numerous and

stronger than the inhibiting factors, it is an easy bet
that a technology will be a success.
All four factors—enabling, limiting, motivating,
and inhibiting—can be identified at the individual
user, organizational, content, and system levels. How‐
ever, hardware and software can only be enabling or
limiting; by themselves, hardware and software do
not provide any motivating factors. The motivating
factors must always come from the messages trans‐
mitted or one of the other areas of the ecosystem.
The final dimension of the technology ecosystem
relates to the environment within which communica‐
tion technologies are introduced and operate. These
factors can be termed “external” factors, while ones
relating to the technology itself are “internal” factors.
In order to understand a communication technology
or be able to predict how a technology will diffuse,
both internal and external factors must be studied.
Applying the Communication
Technology Ecosystem
The best way to understand the communication
technology ecosystem is to apply it to a specific tech‐
nology. One of the fastest diffusing technologies dis‐
cussed later in this book is the “personal assistant,”
such as the Amazon Alexa or Google Home—these
devices provide a great application of the communi‐
cation technology ecosystem.
Let’s start with the hardware. Most personal as‐
sistants are small or medium‐sized units, designed to
sit on a shelf or table. Studying the hardware reveals
that the unit contains multiple speakers, a micro‐
phone, some computer circuitry, and a radio transmit‐
ter and receiver. Studying the hardware, we can get
clues about the functionality of the device, but the key
to the functionality is the software.
The software related to the personal assistant en‐
ables conversion of speech heard by the microphone
into text or other commands that connect to another
set of software designed to fulfill the commands given
to the system. From the perspective of the user, it
doesn’t matter whether the device converts speech to
commands or whether the device transmits speech to
a central computer where the translation takes place—
Chapter 1  The Communication Technology Ecosystem
the device is designed so that it doesn’t matter to the
user. The important thing that becomes apparent is
that the hardware used by the system extends well be‐
yond the device through the Internet to servers that
are programmed to deliver answers and content re‐
quested through the personal assistant.
So, who owns these servers? To answer that ques‐
tion, we have to look at the organizational infrastruc‐
ture. It is apparent that there are two distinct sets of
organizations involved—one set that makes and dis‐
tributes the devices themselves to the public and the
other that provides the back‐end processing power to
find answers and deliver content. For the Amazon
Alexa, Amazon has designed and arranged for the
manufacture of the device. (Note that few companies
specialize in making hardware; rather, most commu‐
nication hardware is made by companies that special‐
ize in manufacturing on a contract basis.) Amazon
also owns and controls the servers that interpret and
seek answers to questions and commands. But to get
to those servers, the commands have to first pass
through cable or phone networks owned by other
companies, with answers or content provided by serv‐
ers on the Internet owned by still other companies. At
this point, it is helpful to examine the economic rela‐
tionships among the companies involved. The users’
Internet Service Provider (ISP) passes all commands
and content from the home device to the cloud‐based
servers, which are, in turn, connected to servers
owned by other companies that deliver content.
So, if a person requests a weather forecast, the
servers connect to a weather service for content. A
person might also request music, finding themselves
connected to Amazon’s own music service or to an‐
other service such as Pandora or Sirius/XM. A person
ordering a pizza will have their message directed to
the appropriate pizza delivery service, with the only
content returned being a confirmation of the order,
perhaps with status updates as the order is fulfilled.
The pizza delivery example is especially important
because it demonstrates the economics of the system.
The servers used are expensive to purchase and oper‐
ate, so the company that designs and sells personal as‐
sistants has a motivation to contract with individual
pizza delivery services to pay a small commission
5
Section I  Fundamentals
every time someone orders a pizza. Extending this ex‐
ample to multiple other services will help you under‐
stand why some services are provided for free but
others must be paid, with the pieces of the system
working together to spread revenue to all of the com‐
panies involved.
The point is that it is not possible to understand
the personal assistant without understanding all of
the organizations implicated in the operation of the
device. And if two organizations decide not to coop‐
erate with each other, content or service may simply
not be available.
The potential conflicts among these organizations
can move our attention to the next level of the ecosys‐
tem, the social system level. The political system, for
example, has the potential to enable services by allow‐
ing or encouraging collaboration among organiza‐
tions. Or it can do the opposite, limiting or inhibiting
cooperation with regulations. (Net neutrality, dis‐
cussed in Chapter 5, is a good example of the role
played by the political system in enabling or limiting
capabilities of technology.) The system of retail stores
enables distribution of the personal assistant devices
to local retail stores, making it easier for a user to be‐
come an “adopter” of the device.
Studying the personal assistant also helps under‐
stand the enabling and limiting functions. For exam‐
ple, the fact that Amazon has programmed the Alexa
app to accept commands in dozens of languages from
Spanish to Klingon is an enabling factor, but the fact
that there are dozens of other languages that have not
been programming is definitely a limiting factor.
Similarly, the ease of ordering a pizza through
your personal assistant is a motivating factor, but hav‐
ing your device not understand your commands is an
inhibiting factor.
Finally, examination of the environment gives us
more information, including competitive devices,
public sentiment, and general economic environment.
All of those details help us to understand how
personal assistants work and how companies can
profit in many different ways from their use. But we
can’t fully understand the role that these devices play
in the lives of their users without studying the indi‐
vidual user. We can examine what services are used,
6
why they are used, how often they are used, the im‐
pacts of their use, and much more.
Applying the Communication Technology Eco‐
system thus allows us to look at a technology, its uses,
and its effects by giving a multidimensional perspec‐
tive that provides a more comprehensive insight than
we would get from just examining the hardware or
software.
Each communication technology discussed in this
book has been analyzed using the technology ecosys‐
tem to ensure that all relevant factors have been in‐
cluded in the discussions. As you will see, in most
cases, organizational and system‐level factors (espe‐
cially political factors) are more important in the de‐
velopment and adoption of communication technol‐
ogies than the hardware itself. For example, political
forces have, to date, prevented the establishment of a
single world standard for high‐definition television
(HDTV) production and transmission. As individual
standards are selected in countries and regions, the
standard selected is as likely to be the product of po‐
litical and economic factors as of technical attributes
of the system.
Organizational factors can have similar powerful
effects. For example, as discussed in Chapter 4, the en‐
try of a single company, IBM, into the personal com‐
puter business in the early 1980s resulted in funda‐
mental changes in the entire industry, dictating stand‐
ards and anointing an operating system (MS‐DOS) as
a market leader. Finally, the individuals who adopt
(or choose not to adopt) a technology, along with their
motivations and the manner in which they use the
technology, have profound impacts on the develop‐
ment and success of a technology following its initial
introduction.
Perhaps the best indication of the relative im‐
portance of organizational and system‐level factors is
the number of changes individual authors made to the
chapters in this book between the time of the initial
chapter submission in January 2018 and production of
the final, camera‐ready text in April 2018. Very little
new information was added regarding hardware, but
numerous changes were made due to developments
at the organizational and system levels.

To facilitate your understanding of all of the ele‐
ments related to the technologies explored, each chap‐
ter in this book has been written from the perspective
of the technology ecosystem. The individual writers
have endeavored to update developments in each
area to the extent possible in the brief summaries pro‐
vided. Obviously, not every technology experienced
developments in each area of the ecosystem, so each
report is limited to areas in which relatively recent de‐
velopments have taken place.
Why Study New Technologies?
One constant in the study of media is that new
technologies seem to get more attention than tradi‐
tional, established technologies. There are many rea‐
sons for the attention. New technologies are more
dynamic and evolve more quickly, with greater po‐
tential to cause change in other parts of the media sys‐
tem. Perhaps the reason for our attention is the natural
attraction that humans have to motion, a characteristic
inherited from our most distant ancestors.
There are a number of other reasons for studying
new technologies. Maybe you want to make a lot of
money—and there is a lot of money to be made (and
lost!) on new technologies. If you are planning a career
in the media, you may simply be interested in know‐
ing how the media are changing and evolving, and
how those changes will affect your career.
Or you might want to learn lessons from the failure
of new communication technologies so you can avoid
failure in your own career, investments, etc. Simply
put, the majority of new technologies introduced do
not succeed in the market. Some fail because the tech‐
nology itself was not attractive to consumers (such as
the 1980s’ attempt to provide AM stereo radio). Some
fail because they were far ahead of the market, such as
Qube, the first interactive cable television system, intro‐
duced in the 1970s. Others failed because of bad timing
or aggressive marketing from competitors that suc‐
ceeded despite inferior technology.
The final reason for studying new communication
technologies is to identify patterns of adoption, ef‐
fects, economics, and competition so that we can be
prepared to understand, use, and/or compete with the
Chapter 1  The Communication Technology Ecosystem
next generation of media. Virtually every new tech‐
nology discussed in this book is going to be one of
those “traditional, established technologies” in a few
short years, but there will always be another genera‐
tion of new media to challenge the status quo.
Overview of Book
The key to getting the most out of this book is
therefore to pay as much attention as possible to the
reasons that some technologies succeed and others
fail. To that end, this book provides you with a num‐
ber of tools you can apply to virtually any new tech‐
nology that comes along. These tools are explored in
the first five chapters, which we refer to as the Com‐
munication Technology Fundamentals. You might be
tempted to skip over these to get to the latest develop‐
ments about the individual technologies that are mak‐
ing an impact today, but you will be much better
equipped to learn lessons from these technologies if
you are armed with these tools.
The first of these is the “technology ecosystem”
discussed previously that broadens attention from the
technology itself to the users, organizations, and sys‐
tem surrounding that technology. To that end, each of
the technologies explored in this book provides de‐
tails about all of the elements of the ecosystem.
Of course, studying the history of each technology
can help you find patterns and apply them to different
technologies, times, and places. In addition to includ‐
ing a brief history of each technology, the next chapter,
A History of Communication Technologies, provides a
broad overview of most of the technologies discussed
later in the book, allowing comparisons along a num‐
ber of dimensions: the year introduced, growth rate,
number of current users, etc. This chapter highlights
commonalties in the evolution of individual technolo‐
gies, as well as presents the “big picture” before we
delve into the details. By focusing on the number of
users over time, this chapter also provides a useful ba‐
sis of comparison across technologies.
Another useful tool in identifying patterns across
technologies is the application of theories related to
new communication technologies. By definition, theo‐
ries are general statements that identify the underlying
7
Section I  Fundamentals

mechanisms for adoption and effects of these new tech‐
nologies. Chapter 3 provides an overview of a wide
range of these theories and provides a set of analytic
perspectives that you can apply to both the technolo‐
gies in this book and any new technologies that follow.
The structure of communication industries is then
addressed in Chapter 4. This chapter then explores the
complexity of organizational relationships, along with
the need to differentiate between the companies that
make the technologies and those that sell the technol‐
ogies. The most important force at the system level of
the ecosystem, regulation, is introduced in Chapter 5.
These introductory chapters provide a structure
and a set of analytic tools that define the study of com‐
munication technologies. Following this introduction,
the book then addresses the individual technologies.
The technologies discussed in this book are orga‐
nized into three sections: Electronic Mass Media,
Computers & Consumer Electronics, and Networking
Technologies. These three are not necessarily exclu‐
sive; for example, Digital Signage could be classified
as either an electronic mass medium or a computer
technology. The ultimate decision regarding where to
put each technology was made by determining which
set of current technologies most closely resemble the
technology. Thus, Digital Signage was classified with
electronic mass media. This process also locates the
discussion of a cable television technology—cable mo‐
dems—in the Broadband and Home Networks chap‐
ter in the Networking Technologies section.
Each chapter is followed by a brief bibliography
that represents a broad overview of literally hundreds
of books and articles that provide details about these
technologies. It is hoped that the reader will not only
use these references but will examine the list of source
material to determine the best places to find newer in‐
formation since the publication of this Update.
To help you find your place in this emerging tech‐
nology ecosystem, each technology chapter includes a
paragraph or two discussing how you can get a job in
that area of technology. And to help you imagine the
future, some authors have also added their prediction
of what that technology will be like in 2033—or fifteen
years after this book is published. The goal is not to be
perfectly accurate, but rather to show you some of the
possibilities that could emerge in that time frame.
Most of the technologies discussed in this book are
continually evolving. As this book was completed, many
technological developments were announced but not re‐
leased, corporate mergers were under discussion, and
regulations had been proposed but not passed. Our goal
is for the chapters in this book to establish a basic under‐
standing of the structure, functions, and background
for each technology, and for the supplementary Internet
site to provide brief synopses of the latest developments
for each technology. (The address for the website is
www.tfi.com/ctu.)
The final chapter returns to the “big picture” pre‐
sented in this book, attempting to place these discus‐
sions in a larger context, exploring the process of
starting a company to exploit or profit from these
technologies. Any text such as this one can never be
fully comprehensive, but ideally this text will provide
you with a broad overview of the current develop‐
ments in communication technology.

Bibliography
Ball‐Rokeach, S. J. (1985). The origins of media system dependency: A sociological perspective. Communication Research, 12
(4), 485‐510.
Beniger, J. (1986). The control revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Grant, A. E. (2010). Introduction to communication technologies. In A. E. Grant & J. H. Meadows (Eds.) Communication
Technology Update and Fundamentals (12th ed). Boston: Focal Press.
Grant, A. E. & Wilkinson, J. S. (2007, February). Lessons for communication technologies from Web advertising. Paper
presented to the Mid‐Winter Conference of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication, Reno.
Rogers, E. M. (1986). Communication technology: The new media in society. New York: Free Press.
Vise, D. & Malseed, M. (2006). The Google story: Inside the hottest business, media, and technology success of our time. New York: Delta.

8
 2

A History of
Communication
Technology
Yicheng Zhu, Ph.D.

T he other chapters in this book provide details re‐

garding the history of one or more communica‐
tion technologies. However, one needs to under‐
stand that history works, in some ways, like a telescope.
The closer an observer looks at the details, i.e. the par‐
ticular human behaviors that changed communication
technologies, the less they can grasp the big picture.
This chapter attempts to provide the big picture by
discussing recent advancements along with a review of
happenings “before we were born.” Without the un‐
derstanding of the collective memory of the trailblazers
of communication technology, we will be “children for‐
ever” when we make interpretations and implications
from history records. (Cicero, 1876).
We will visit the print era, the electronic era, and
the digital era in this chapter. To provide a useful per‐
spective, we compare numerical statistics of adoption
and use of these technologies across time. To that end,
this chapter follows patterns adopted in previous sum‐
maries of trends in U.S. communications media (Brown
& Bryant, 1989; Brown, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004,
2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014; Zhu & Brown, 2016). Non‐
monetary units are reported when possible, although
dollar expenditures appear as supplementary measures.
A notable exception is the de facto standard of measur‐
ing motion picture acceptance in the market: box office
receipts.
Government sources are preferred for consistency
in this chapter. However, they have recently become
more volatile in terms of format, measurement and
focus due to the shortened life circle of technologies
(for example, some sources don’t distinguish laptops
from tablets when calculating PC shipments). Readers
should use caution in interpreting data for individual
years and instead emphasize the trends over several
years. One limitation of this government data is the lag
time before statistics are reported, with the most recent
data being a year or more older. The companion web‐
site for this book (www.tfi.com/ctu) reports more detailed
statistics than could be printed in this chapter.


Doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC).
(Zhu and the editors acknowledge the contributions of the late Dan Brown, Ph.D., who created the first versions of this chapter and the
related figures and tables).

9
Section I  Fundamentals
Communication technologies are evolving at a
much faster pace today than they used to be, and the
way in which we differentiate technologies is more
about concepts rather than products. For example, au‐
diocassettes and compact discs seem doomed in the
face of rapid adoption of newer forms of digital audio
recordings. But what fundamentally changed our daily
experience is the surge of individual power brought by
technological convenience: digitized audios empow‐
ered our mobility and efficiency both at work or at play.
Quadraphonic sound, CB radios, 8‐track audiotapes,
and 8mm film cameras ceased to exist as standalone
products in the marketplace, and we exclude them, not
because they disappeared, but because their concepts
were converted or integrated into newer and larger
concepts. This chapter traces trends that reveal clues
about what has happened and what may happen in the
use of respective media forms.
To illustrate the growth rates and specific statis‐
tics regarding each technology, a large set of tables
and figures have been placed on the companion web‐
site for this book at www.tfi.com/ctu. Your understand‐
ing of each technology will be aided by referring to the
website as you read each section.
The Print Era
Printing began in China thousands of years before
Johann Gutenberg developed the movable type print‐
ing press in 1455 in Germany. Gutenberg’s press trig‐
gered a revolution that began an industry that re‐
mained stable for another 600 years (Rawlinson, 2011).
Printing in the United States grew from a one‐issue
newspaper in 1690 to become the largest print industry
in the world (U.S. Department of Commerce/Interna‐
tional Trade Association, 2000). This enterprise in‐
cludes newspapers, periodicals, books, directories,
greeting cards, and other print media.
Newspapers
Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick was
the first newspaper produced in North America, ap‐
pearing in 1690 (Lee, 1917). Table 2.1 and Figure 2.1
from the companion website (www.tfi.com/ctu) for this
book show that U.S. newspaper firms and newspaper
10
circulation had extremely slow growth until the 1800s.
Early growth suffered from relatively low literacy rates
and the lack of discretionary cash among the bulk of the
population. The progress of the industrial revolution
brought money for workers and improved mechanized
printing processes. Lower newspaper prices and the
practice of deriving revenue from advertisers encour‐
aged significant growth beginning in the 1830s. News‐
papers made the transition from the realm of the edu‐
cated and wealthy elite to a mass medium serving a
wider range of people from this period through the
Civil War era (Huntzicker, 1999).
The Mexican and Civil Wars stimulated public de‐
mand for news by the middle 1800s, and modern jour‐
nalism practices, such as assigning reporters to cover
specific stories and topics, began to emerge. Circulation
wars among big city newspapers in the 1880s featured
sensational writing about outrageous stories. Both the
number of newspaper firms and newspaper circulation
began to soar. Although the number of firms would
level off in the 20th century, circulation continued to
rise.
The number of morning newspapers more than
doubled after 1950, despite a 16% drop in the number
of daily newspapers over that period. Overall newspa‐
per circulation remained higher at the start of the new
millennium than in 1950, although it inched downward
throughout the 1990s. Although circulation actually in‐
creased in many developing nations, both U.S. newspa‐
per circulation and the number of U.S. newspaper firms
are lower today than the respective figures posted in
the early 1990s. Many newspapers that operated for
decades are now defunct, and many others offer only
online electronic versions.
The newspaper industry shrunk as we entered the
21 century when new technologies such as the Internet
st
became popular outlets for advertising. Newspaper
publishing revenue declined from $29 billion in 2010 to
$23 billion in 2017 (US Census Bureau, 2016). In the
meantime, percentage of revenue generated from
online newspapers rose from 5.6% to 15.2%. (US Cen‐
sus Bureau, 2016). Advertising as a source of revenue
for newspaper publishers dropped by 27% from $20.4
billion to $14.9 billion (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017).

Figure 2.A
Communication Technology Timeline
Periodicals
“The first colonial magazines appeared in Philadel‐
phia in 1741, about 50 years after the first newspapers”
(Campbell, 2002, p. 310). Few Americans could read in
that era, and periodicals were costly to produce and cir‐
culate. Magazines were often subsidized and distrib‐
uted by special interest groups, such as churches
(Huntzicker, 1999). The Saturday Evening Post, the long‐
est running magazine in U.S. history, began in 1821 and
became the first magazine to both target women as an
audience and to be distributed to a national audience.
By 1850, nearly 600 magazines were operating.
By early in the 20th century, national magazines
became popular with advertisers who wanted to reach
wide audiences. No other medium offered such oppor‐
tunity. However, by the middle of the century, the
many successful national magazines began dying in the
face of advertiser preferences for the new medium of
television and the increasing costs of periodical distribu‐
tion. Magazines turned to smaller niche audiences that
were more effectively targeted. Table 2.2, Figure 2.2, and
Figure 2.3 on the companion website (www.tfi.com/ctu)
show the number of American periodical titles by year,
revealing that the number of new periodical titles
nearly doubled from 1958 to 1960.
Chapter 2  A History of Communication Technology
Source: Technology Futures, Inc.
Single copy magazine sales were mired in a long
period of decline in 2009 when circulation fell by
17.2%. However, subscription circulation fell by only
5.9%. In 2010, the Audit Bureau of Circulation re‐
ported that, among the 522 magazine titles monitored
by the Bureau, the number of magazine titles in the
United States fell by 8.7% (Agnese, 2011).
In 2010, 20,707 consumer magazines were pub‐
lished in North America, reaching a paid circulation of
$8.8 billion. Subscriptions accounted for $6.2 billion
(71%) of that circulation. During that year, 193 new
North American magazines began publishing, but 176
magazines closed. Many print magazines were also
available in digital form, and many had eliminated
print circulation in favor of digital publishing. In 2009,
81 North American magazines moved online, but the
number of additional magazines that went online in
2010 dropped to 28 (Agnese, 2011).
Books
Stephen Daye printed the first book in colonial
America, The Bay Psalm Book, in 1640 (Campbell, 2002).
Books remained relatively expensive and rare until af‐
ter the printing process benefited from the industrial
revolution. Linotype machines developed in the 1880s
allowed for mechanical typesetting. After World War II,
the popularity of paperback books helped the industry
11
Section I  Fundamentals
expand. The U.S. book publishing industry includes
87,000 publishers, most of which are small businesses.
Many of these literally operate as “mom‐and‐pop desk‐
top operations” (Peters & Donald, 2007, p. 11).
Table 2.3 and Figures 2.3 and 2.4 from the com‐
panion website (www.tfi.com/ctu) show new book titles
published by year from the late 1800s through 2016.
While times of war negatively affected the book in‐
dustry, the number of book titles in the U.S. has been
generally increasing with short‐lived fluctuations like
those in 1983‐1986 and 1997‐1999. The U.S. Bureau of
the Census reports furnished data based on material
from R. R. Bowker, which changed its reporting meth‐
ods beginning with the 1998 report. Ink and Grabois
(2000) explained the increase as resulting from the
change in the method of counting titles “that results
in a more accurate portrayal of the current state of
American book publishing” (p. 508). The older count‐
ing process included only books included by the Li‐
brary of Congress Cataloging in Publication program.
This program included publishing by the largest
American publishing companies, but omitted such
books as “inexpensive editions, annuals, and much of
the output of small presses and self‐publishers” (Ink
& Grabois, 2000, p. 509). Ink and Grabois observed
that the U.S. ISBN (International Standard Book Num‐
ber) Agency assigned more than 10,000 new ISBN
publisher prefixes annually.
Books have long been available for reading via
computers, but dedicated e‐book readers have trans‐
formed the reading experience by bringing many
readers into the digital era. By the end of 2009, 3.7 mil‐
lion Americans were reading e‐books. In 2010, the
readership grew to more than 10.3 million, an increase
of 178%, and surveys reported by the Book Industry
Study Group (BISG) reported that 20% of respondents
had stopped buying printed books in favor of e‐books
within a year. By July 2010, Amazon reported that
sales of e‐books surpassed that of print hardcover
sales for the first time, with “143 e‐books sold for
every 100 print hardcover books” (Dillon, 2011, p. 5).
From mid‐December 2011 through January 2012, the
proportion of Americans owning both e‐book readers
and tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to
19%, with 29% owning at least one of the devices
(Rainie, 2012). In January 2014, e‐book penetration
rate in the U.S. reached 32% (Pew Research Center,
12
2014), and 51% of U.S. households owned a tablet in
April 2015 (Nielsen, 2015a). However, e‐book sales
revenue in the United States reached its peak in 2014
($1.6 billion) and continued to drop in 2015 ($1.4 bil‐
lion) and 2016 ($1.1 billion) (Association of American
Publishers, 2017).
The Electronic Era
The telegraph transitioned from the print era to a
new period by introducing a means of sending mes‐
sages far more rapidly than was previously possible.
Soon, Americans and people around the world enjoyed
a world enhanced by such electronic media as wired
telephones, motion pictures, audio recording, radio,
television, cable television, and satellite television.
Telephone
With the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell be‐
came the first to transmit speech electronically in 1876.
By June 30, 1877, 230 telephones were in use, and the
number rose to 1,300 by the end of August, mostly to
avoid the need for a skilled interpreter of telegraph
messages. The first switching office connected three
company offices in Boston beginning on May 17, 1877,
reflecting a focus on business rather than residential
use during the telephone’s early decades. Hotels be‐
came early adopters of telephones as they sought to re‐
duce the costs of employing human messengers, and
New York’s 100 largest hotels had 21,000 telephones by
1909. After 1894, non‐business telephone use became
common, in part because business use lowered the cost
of telephone service. By 1902, 2,315,000 telephones
were in service in the United States (Aronson, 1977). Ta‐
ble 2.4 and Figure 2.4 on the companion website
(www.tfi.com/ctu) document the growth to near ubiquity
of telephones in U.S. households and the expanding
presence of wireless telephones.
Wireless Telephones
Guglielmo Marconi sent the first wireless data
messages in 1895. The growing popularity of teleph‐
ony led many to experiment with Marconi’s radio
technology as another means for interpersonal com‐
munication. By the 1920s, Detroit police cars had mo‐
bile radiophones for voice communication (ITU,
1999). The Bell system offered radio telephone service

in 1946 in St. Louis, the first of 25 cities to receive the
service. Bell engineers divided reception areas into
cells in 1947, but cellular telephones that switched ef‐
fectively among cells as callers moved did not arrive
until the 1970s. The first call on a portable, handheld
cell phone occurred in 1973. However, in 1981, only 24
people in New York City could use their mobile
phones at the same time, and only 700 customers
could have active contracts. To increase the number of
people who could receive service, the Federal Com‐
munications Commission (FCC) began offering cellu‐
lar telephone system licenses by lottery in June 1982
(Murray, 2001). Other countries, such as Japan in 1979
and Saudi Arabia in 1982, operated cellular systems
earlier than the United States (ITU, 1999).
The U.S. Congress promoted a more advanced
group of mobile communication services in 1993 by
creating a classification that became known as Com‐
mercial Mobile Radio Service. This classification al‐
lowed for consistent regulatory oversight of these
technologies and encouraged commercial competi‐
tion among providers (FCC, 2005). By the end of 1996,
about 44 million Americans subscribed to wireless tel‐
ephone services (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2008).
The new century brought an explosion of wireless
telephones, and phones morphed into multipurpose
devices (i.e., smartphones) with capabilities previ‐
ously limited to computers. By the end of 2016, wire‐
less phone penetration in the United States reached
395.9 million subscribers (CTIA, 2017), it further
trended up to 417.5 million by 2017 (FierceWireless,
2017). CTIA‐The Wireless Association (CTIA, 2017) re‐
ported that more than half (50.8%) of all American
households were wireless‐only by the end of 2016 up
from about 10% in 2006. By 2017, worldwide ship‐
ments of smartphones exceeded 1.5 billion units (IDC,
2017), five times the quantity shipped in 2010 (IDC as
cited by Amobi, 2013). As the Chinese smartphone
market gradually matured, IDC (2015a) also fore‐
casted that India would replace China as the leading
driver of shipment increases.
Nevertheless, a factor that may trouble the ad‐
vancement of smartphone sales and development is
trade policy conflicts. Some governments are setting
up barriers to foreign smartphone imports for trade or
national security reasons. Without these obstacles,
Chapter 2  A History of Communication Technology
technological competition could have been fairer in
the global market place and may lead to higher pene‐
tration rates and revenues for companies, with better
services and products for ordinary customers.
Motion Pictures
In the 1890s, George Eastman improved on work
by and patents purchased from Hannibal Goodwin in
1889 to produce workable motion picture film. The
Lumière brothers projected moving pictures in a Paris
café in 1895, hosting 2,500 people nightly at their mov‐
ies. William Dickson, an assistant to Thomas Edison,
developed the kinetograph, an early motion picture
camera, and the kinetoscope, a motion picture view‐
ing system. A New York movie house opened in 1894,
offering moviegoers several coin‐fed kinetoscopes.
Edison’s Vitascope, which expanded the length of
films over those shown via kinetoscopes and allowed
larger audiences to simultaneously see the moving
images, appeared in public for the first time in 1896.
In France in that same year, Georges Méliès started the
first motion picture theater. Short movies became part
of public entertainment in a variety of American ven‐
ues by 1900 (Campbell, 2002), and average weekly
movie attendance reached 40 million people by 1922.
Average weekly motion picture theater attend‐
ance, as shown in Table 2.5 and Figure 2.6 on the com‐
panion website (www.tfi.com/ctu), increased annually
from the earliest available census reports on the sub‐
ject in 1922 until 1930. After falling dramatically dur‐
ing the Great Depression, attendance regained growth
in 1934 and continued until 1937. Slight declines in the
prewar years were followed by a period of strength
and stability throughout the World War II years. After
the end of the war, average weekly attendance
reached its greatest heights: 90 million attendees
weekly from 1946 through 1949. After the introduc‐
tion of television, weekly attendance would never
again reach these levels.
Although a brief period of leveling off occurred in
the late 1950s and early 1960s, average weekly attend‐
ance continued to plummet until a small recovery be‐
gan in 1972. This recovery signaled a period of relative
stability that lasted into the 1990s. Through the last
decade of the century, average weekly attendance en‐
joyed small but steady gains.
13
Section I  Fundamentals
Box office revenues, which declined generally for
20 years after the beginning of television, began a re‐
covery in the late 1960s, then began to skyrocket in the
1970s. The explosion continued until after the turn of
the new century. However, much of the increase in
revenues came from increases in ticket prices and in‐
flation, rather than from increased popularity of films
with audiences, and total motion picture revenue
from box office receipts declined during recent years,
as studios realized revenues from television and vid‐
eocassettes (U.S. Department of Commerce/Interna‐
tional Trade Association, 2000).
As shown in Table 2.5 on the companion website
(www.tfi.com/ctu), American movie fans spent an aver‐
age of 12 hours per person per year from 1993 through
1997 going to theaters. That average stabilized through
the first decade of the 21st century (U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 2010), despite the growing popularity of
watching movies at home with new digital tools. In
2011, movie rental companies were thriving, with Net‐
flix boasting 25 million subscribers and Redbox having
32,000 rental kiosks in the United States (Amobi,
2011b). However, recent physical sales and rental of
home entertainment content suffered from the rise of
web streaming services and consumer behavior
change (Digital Entertainment Group, 2017). Redbox
kiosk rentals started to decline in 2013 ($1.97 billion)
to $1.76 billion in 2015 (Outerwall, 2016).
The record‐breaking success of Avatar in 2009 as a
3D motion picture triggered a spate of followers who
tried to revive the technology that was a brief hit in the
1950s. Avatar earned more than $761 million at Ameri‐
can box offices and nearly $2.8 billion worldwide.
In the United States, nearly 8,000 of 39,500 theater
screens were set up for 3D at the end of 2010, half of
them having been installed in that year. The ticket
prices for 3D films ran 20‐30% higher than that of 2D
films, and 3D films comprised 20% of the new films
released. Nevertheless, American audiences preferred
subsequent 2D films to 3D competitors, although 3D
response remained strong outside the United States,
where 61% of the world’s 22,000 3D screens were in‐
stalled. In 2014, there were 64,905 3D screens world‐
wide, except for the Asian Pacific region (55% annual
growth), the annual growth rates of 3D screen num‐
bers have stabilized around 6%‐10% (HIS quoted in
14
MPAA, 2015). Another factor in the lack of success of
3D in America might have been the trend toward
viewing movies at home, often with digital playback.
In 2010, home video purchases and rentals reached
$18.8 billion in North America, compared with only
$10.6 billion spent at theaters (Amobi, 2011b). U.S.
home entertainment spending rose to $20.8 billion in
2017, with revenues in the physical market shrinking
($12 billion in 2016) and digital subscriptions to web
streaming (e.g. Netflix) soaring (Digital Entertain‐
ment Group, 2018). In the meantime, the 2014 U.S. do‐
mestic box office slipped 1.4% to $10.44 billion (Nash
Information Services quoted in Willens, 2015) and re‐
mained at a similar level for the next three years (Dig‐
ital Entertainment Group, 2017).
Globally, the Asian Pacific region and Latin
America have been the main contributors to global
box office revenue since 2004 (MPAA, 2017). And the
bloom of the Chinese movie market has been a major
reason for the increase of global revenue. Chinese box
office revenue continued to soar to $6.78 billion in
2015, this figure was only $1.51 billion in 2011, and a
48.7% annual growth rate in 2015 was also a new his‐
torical record for the Chinese movie market (State Ad‐
ministration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and TV,
2016).
Audio Recording
Thomas Edison expanded on experiments from
the 1850s by Leon Scott de Martinville to produce a
talking machine or phonograph in 1877 that played
back sound recordings from etchings in tin foil. Edi‐
son later replaced the foil with wax. In the 1880s, Em‐
ile Berliner created the first flat records from metal
and shellac designed to play on his gramophone,
providing mass production of recordings. The early
standard recordings played at 78 revolutions per mi‐
nute (rpm). After shellac became a scarce commodity
because of World War II, records were manufactured
from polyvinyl plastic. In 1948, CBS Records pro‐
duced the long‐playing record that turned at 33‐1/3
rpm, extending the playing time from three to four
minutes to 10 minutes. RCA countered in 1949 with 45
rpm records that were incompatible with machines
that played other formats. After a five‐year war of for‐
mats, record players were manufactured that would
play recordings at all of the speeds (Campbell, 2002).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN