This paper exams historiographical issues arising from a study of the early history of British telephony. Greg Radick (2008) has pointed out that when formulating and exploring truth claims, historians, like scientists, employ counterfactual thinking, asking 'what if x had been different?' Such conjectures are useful for considering issues of causality. How we employ counterfactual thinking has been the subject of several recent articles (Radick et al, Isis, 2008, Soler et al., Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2008, Shapin, 2007).

However, whilst much emphasis has been placed on whether or not counterfactual thinking can be helpful within the history of science, little has been written about the ways such thinking can sometimes be dangerous to historical enquiry. I argue that Charles R. Perry's 1977 essay, 'The British Experience 1876-1912: The Impact of the Telephone During the Years of Delay' is a good example of this.

Perry formalised the idea that, during the period covered, the progress of British telephony was held back. However, I argue that this thesis, which has been very influential in subsequent scholarship, has itself held back our understanding of the history of telephony. Perry made an unhelpful counterfactual assumption, namely that there existed an ideal way in which British telephony should have developed; he then interpreted the fact that it did not follow this model as evidence of a 'delay' which requires explanation. This tacit methodological counterfactualism led him to problematise the low uptake of the telephone during this period instead of seeking to understand why people decided to use telephones in the first place.

Perry's essay is not alone as an American economic history of technology which misrepresents the development, proliferation and use of certain technologies outside the US. Other examples include Martin Wiener's 1981 book English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980 and Thomas Hughes' 1983 book Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. I argue that we must compensate for the methodological bias of these studies in our contemporary histories.

Using material from the British Telecom Archives in Holborn, London, and periodical sources to suggest an alternative narrative to Perry's, this paper illustrates how taking a normative instead of a positive approach to counterfactual history can result in misleading narratives, and suggests a way to rectify this.