The Global Wireless charts a history of wireless beginning in the 1910s, when it was used as a tool for global communication, and ending as it declined and slowly fell from view.

Located at a crossroads of media history and science and technology studies, The Global Wireless recounts how the advent of wireless technologies created a novel socio-technical problem: since radio signals easily and unwittingly crossed national borders, they challenged existing systems and standards of national media infrastructure control. The book further examines the political negotiations around the International Telecommunication Union, the growth of international communication networks, and the expansion of global media companies on the eve of World War I. The Global Wireless demonstrates that long before Wi-Fi and 5G, another wireless technology had already spread around the globe and prompted, in its wake, a radical reconsideration of networked communication and community.

The Global Wireless should appeal to a broad range of readers, from specialists in the history of radio, technology, and global politics, to professionals and hobbyists in today’s wireless and radio industries.