Abstract

The author emphasises the contribution made by the public authorities, on the one hand, to the introduction in the public administration of two important technological innovations (the telephone and the typewriter), and on the other, to exchanges of models and innovative ideas with the private sector. Reconstruction of the history of legislation on telephones shows the successful statization of telephony and the definitive demise of any municipal management of the service. The communes were nonetheless able to act as innovators as both users and promoters of the new technologies, with an important role played by horizontal relationships among municipalities driven by competitive, but mainly imitative and cooperative, dynamics.