Samuel Morse's telegraph Telegrams seem so old fashioned and fussy today.  Younger readers have probably never even seen a real telegram.  They might even believe "Morse Code" is a computer programming language. The telegraph was the internet of its day--only it caught on faster than the internet.  Before the telegraph, n ews travelled slowly at three to five mile per hour , about as fast as a person can walk in an hour, or ride a horse on a good road.  It is difficult to imagine in modern times the impact of "instant news" the telegraph made possible. The Post Office worried the telegraph would make mailing letters obsolete.  English railroads had experimented with using a crude telegraph signal to operators of switches for train tracks.  The idea of turning those signals into more sophisticated methods of conveying complex messages produced a variety of early types of telegraphs, all focused on printing out letters. A sender would have to use a pia...

  William & Kate!   Harry & Meghan! Charles & Diana! Vicky & Al! Fred & Vicky! Bertie & Alexandra! American newspapers and magazines have long devoted large chunks of their publications to the adventurous and romantic goings on of the British Royal family. It certainly didn’t start with William and Kate or Charles and Diana. Prince Albert and Queen Victoria wedding day "...marry as a woman, not as a queen." A few weeks after her 18 th birthday, Victoria became queen of England in 1837, just at the dawn of mass media. After more than a century of stodgy German kings, there was finally a beautiful young, unmarried princess, one that  fit the fairy tales.   Her prince, literally, was Prince Albert, of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, one of the very numerous independent dukedoms, principalities in the area known by the geographic catch-all term, Germany.    The couple was good looking and in love.   The young queen had designed her own...

  Fiat Lux! Camphene & Burning Fluid for Sale There is darkness behind light. We take it for granted—lighting is cheap, easy, and quick. It was not always so. In a survey carried out by a newsmagazine in the late 1850s, people were asked to list the most important and useful things invented in the previous two decades.   At the top of the list: matches .  Matches made starting light so much easier and faster.   They were referred to at the time as "lucifers" from the devil angel's name which means in Latin "bringer of light."  Now, with lucifers, there was no more careful tending of a fire not to go out, or the difficult journey to a neighbor’s farm for a bit of fire to carefully take home.   Candles, lamps, and cigars could now be lighted anywhere. Matches were so cheap they were available to all levels of society. Originally made from phosphorus, matches could burst into flame with the slightest friction—in a pocket, scuffed on the floor, or simp...