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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Missing Three-Quarter and the chosen topic is Telegrams and the Telegraph.
A few facts:
STOP Technically, Sherlock Holmes was a big fan of e-mail.
“But wait a minute,” one might ask, “they didn’t have e-mail in the Victorian era, did they?”
Well, actually, they did. Sort of.
E-mail. Electronic mail. Mail sent via cables.
Sure, there wasn’t a computer at the end of the cable in Sherlock Holmes’s time. Instead of a machine decoding signals and passing it to a screen, a human being decoded signals and passed it to a delivery messenger. Both the screen and the delivery messenger then relay the message to the reader. One may be in binary code and the other in Morse code, but the old-fashioned telegram was, strictly speaking, electronic mail. [Sherlock Peoria]
STOP In 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone developed the electric telegraph which used an electric current to move magnetic needles and thus transmit messages in code. The first operational telegraph system linked Euston station and Camden town, and from there it spread all over the railway network, used both to carry messages and to control signalling.
The technology of the telegraph rapidly expanded… With instruments in every post office, the telegraph, and its visible offspring, the telegram, personal communication on a scale hitherto inconceivable became commonplace.
A telegraph cable was laid across the Channel in 1851, followed by others across the Irish and North Seas. In 1866 Brunel's huge ship, the Great Eastern, laid a durable telegraph cable across the Atlantic. The global network spread rapidly, with many countries establishing their own systems. Colonial, military and commercial implications were quickly appreciated. By 1878 Britain had constructed two overland and one maritime telegraph links to India, part of a network that by the end of the century had reached almost every corner of the world. [Paul Atterbury]
STOP An electrical telegraph was independently developed and patented in the United States in 1837 by Samuel Morse. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signalling alphabet with Morse. The first telegram in the United States was sent by Morse on 11 January 1838, across two miles (3 km) of wire at Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey, although it was only later, in 1844, that he sent the message "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" from the Capitol in Washington to the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore…
The Morse telegraphic apparatus was officially adopted as the standard for European telegraphy in 1851. Only Great Britain with its extensive overseas empire kept the needle telegraph of Cooke and Wheatstone. [Wikipedia]
STOP The telegraph companies charged for their service by the number of words in a message, with a maximum of 15 characters per word for a plain-language telegram, and 10 per word for one written in code. The [telegram] style developed to minimize costs but still convey the message clearly and unambiguously...
The average length of a telegram in the 1900s in the US was 11.93 words; more than half of the messages were 10 words or fewer. According to another study, the mean length of the telegrams sent in the UK before 1950 was 14.6 words or 78.8 characters. [Wikipedia]
STOP ...the Victorian version of e-mail was slightly more expensive than the modern [email] version. When Holmes paid for “a five shilling reply,” he was paying close to twenty-five bucks in modern American cash. [Sherlock Peoria]
STOP Telegraph Offices are, as a rule, open from 8 am, to 8 p.m. on week-days, and from 8 a.m. to 10 am. on Sundays. At the following offices, however, there is attendance continuously during the day and night, both on weekdays and Sundays.
LONDON OFFICES. Central Telegraph Station, St. Martin’s-let-Grand, E.C.; Paddington Station (G.W.R. Co.’s office), W. ; St. Pancras (Midland), NW.; Victoria Station (LC. & D.R.), S.W.; West Strand, W.C.
COUNTRY OFFICES —England—Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff; Derby, Exeter, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Norwich, Nottingham, Plymouth, Sheffield, Southampton. [Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879, quoted on The Dictionary of Victorian London]
STOP [In 1901] Telegrams may be sent to all parts of the United Kingdom (U.K.) at the rate of 6d. for the first twelve words, and one half-penny for each additional word; addresses are charged for. The minimum cost of foreign telegrams is 10d.
Cablegrams (i.e. messages by one of the trans-atlantic cables) may be sent from Europe to North America (fee: 1s. to 1/8 per word of 10 letters), and to other parts of the globe. [The Victorianist]
STOP If you needed to send someone a message, you would go to your local post office or telegraph office and fill in a telegram form…
Once you’d … created your written telegram, the person behind the counter would have counted up how many words you’d used and charged you for those words. It would have then have been sent, either – if it was a larger office – through a pneumatic tube system to the telegraph office, or – if it was a smaller office – it would have either have been telegraphed or telephoned to the nearest telegraph office for transmission to the distant end.
In towns and cities, the larger post offices used a pneumatic tube system. The written telegram message was folded up, and fed into a little container. The container was then pushed into a brass tube. When the door to the tube closed, the force from compressed air whizzed the container to the telegraph room in another part of the building, or to a nearby telegraph office. [Connected Earth]
STOP In the mid 19th century several private telegraph companies were established in the UK… The responsibility for the 'electric telegraphs' was officially transferred to the GPO [General Post Office] on Friday, 4 February 1870.
Overseas telegraphs did not fall within the monopoly. The private telegraph companies that already existed were bought out. The new combined telegraph service had 1,058 telegraph offices in towns and cities and 1,874 offices at railway stations. 6,830,812 telegrams were transmitted in 1869 producing revenue of £550,000. [Wikipedia]
STOP The Electric Telegraphs throughout the Kingdom being now national property, are managed by the General Post Office: the head office being in St. Martin's-le-Grand, London (see General Post Office). More than 300 branch offices are now distributed through London, so that no quarter or neighbourhood is far distant from one. By means of the London Postal Telegraph messages may be sent in a very short time from any part of London, through 400 or 500 miles of wires carried over the tops of the houses, and under the streets. The charge is 1s. for 20 words exclusive of addresses of sender and receiver - increasing at a rate of 3d. per 5 words beyond that number-to any part of the United Kingdom. Foreign telegrams are charged at various rates (see Postal Guide). [Murray's Handbook to London As It Is, 1879, quoted on The Dictionary of Victorian London]
STOP Women in telegraphy have been evident since the 1840s. The introduction of practical systems of telegraphy in the 1840s led to the creation of a new occupational category, the telegrapher, telegraphist or telegraph operator. Duties of the telegrapher included sending and receiving telegraphic messages, known as telegrams, using a variety of signaling systems, and routing of trains for the railroads. While telegraphy is often viewed as a males-only occupation, women were also employed as telegraph operators from its earliest days...
Women began to work for a number of private telegraph companies in England in the 1850s, including the Electric Telegraph Company. The Telegraph School for Women was established in London in 1860. The Queen's Institute for the Training and Employment of Educated Women began classes in telegraphy in Dublin in 1862; its graduates were employed by the Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company. Telegraphers in England used the Wheatstone-Cooke system of telegraphy as well as Morse code for transmission of messages. The number of women employed as telegraphists increased after the telegraph service was taken over by the British Post Office in 1870; in that year, 1535 out of 4913, or 31 percent of all operators, were women. [Wikipedia]
STOP These wages reflect weekly pay in the mid- to late '60s...
Mail Coach Guard ... 10/0 + tips
Female telegraph clerk ... 8/0
London artisans ... 36/0
London laborers ... 20/0
Farm hands ... 14/0
Sailors ... 15/0
Seaman on steamers ... 16/4 [James Skipper and George P. Landow]
STOP In the United Kingdom, Ireland, United States and other countries around the world, a telegram messenger, more often known as a telegram delivery boy, telegraph boy or telegram boy was a young male employed to deliver telegrams, usually on bicycle. In the United Kingdom and Ireland telegram boys were employed by the Post Office…
Telegram boys became popular after the Post Office took over control of inland telegraphs from the railways and private telegraph companies. Many of the boys employed by these services to deliver telegrams transferred to the Post Office. In some respects the life of a telegram boy was not unlike that of someone completing military service. They were expected to behave in a manner befitting one who wore the uniform of the Queen, and were required to complete a daily drill. [Wikipedia]
STOP ...during the Crimean War the ability of the telegraph to report events shortly after they occurred radically reconfigured newspapers, creating the modern notion of fast-breaking news. Whereas before the telegraph newspapers would store information from other sources, particularly other newspapers, and slowly dole it out as needed to fill pages, the telegraph’s ability to speed up the reporting of events created a desire to learn about events as quickly as possible and led to the importance of the newspaper scoop — of being the first with a story. [Tom Standage]
STOP Before she embarked on her Diamond Jubilee procession on June 22, 1897, Queen Victoria stopped at the telegraph room in Buckingham Palace. She pressed a button, and within minutes the Central Telegraph Office relayed her message to every country of the Empire. “Thank my beloved people,” it read. “May God bless them.” [Tom Rowley] ...she was speaking to nearly a quarter of the population of the earth. [Liza Picard]
Some useful resources:
Telegrams On Sherlock Peoria.
Victorian Technology By Paul Atterbury, on the BBC website.
Telegram style On Wikipedia.
Telegraphy On Wikipedia.
Electrical telegraph On Wikipedia.
Telegraph Offices On the Dictionary of Victorian London.
The Dictionary of Victorian London This is the main index. Click on ‘Communications’, and then on ‘Telegraph / Wireless’.
Victorian Telecommunications An index of articles on The Victorian Web.
Post, Telegraph, Telephone & Electricity: Communicating in 1901 By The Amateur Casual, on The Victorianist.
Travel, transport and communications Brief mention of the electric telegraph. By Liza Picard, on the British Library website.
Telegram system ends. Stop. Replaced by text messages. Stop By Tom Rowley, on the Telegraph website. Looks at the history of the telegram.
Transcript for How a telegraph was sent – What happened in the post office room On Connected Earth.
Letters in London: Communication and correspondence in the nineteenth-century city Contains a section titled: The telegraph and the position of women in Victorian London: The Telegraph Girl and In the Cage. By Frances Evans, on The Victorian Web.
Samuel Morse On Wikipedia.
General Post Office: Telegraph On Wikipedia.
Post - Delivery Times and Postal Regulations There is a mention at the end of telegraph offices. On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
Post Office Statistics On The Postal Museum.
Women in telegraphy On Wikipedia.
Wages and Cost of Living in the Victorian Era By James Skipper and George P. Landow, on The Victorian Web. Includes ‘Female telegraph clerk’.
Women's Work in the Victorian Era Includes a Victorian illustration of female telegraph operators. By Christy Carlyle, on Romancing the Genres.
How the Telegraph Left Its Mark on Women's History (Specifically US women’s history.) By Cristen Conger, on Stuff Mom Never Told You.
Gender & the Office On Early Office Museum. There is a section headed: Employment of Women in Telegraph and Telephone Operating Rooms.
Telegram messenger On Wikipedia.
Dignity and Impudence A brief look at how the telegraph changed newspapers. On The Victorian Web.
Communcations Networks: Postal Service, Telegraph, LAN, and Internet By Catherine J. Golden, on The Victorian Web.
Women as Telegraphists By Cassienewland, on Scrambled Messages.
Submarine Telegraphy Timeline By Diane Greco Josefowicz, on The Victorian Web.
The Laying of Submarine Cable — The Triumph of Brunel's "Great Eastern" on 27 July 1866 By Philip Allingham, on The Victorian Web.
Get Them on the Blower By Long Branch Mike, on Lapsed Historian. A look at telegrams sent by pneumatic tubes, rather than the electric telegraph.
Paper Hearts: Victorian Correspondence On Victorian Trading Co.
Transatlantic Cable On the Engineering and Technology History Wiki.
Tag Archives: Telegram On The British Postal Museum & Archive blog. All posts tagged with ‘telegram’. NB Most of the posts are not about the Victorian and Edwardian periods.
Uncovering Cleveland Street: Sexuality, Surveillance and late-Victorian Scandal By Katie Hindmarch-Watson, on Notches. A look at telegraph boys’ involvement in prostitution.
The Cleveland Street Scandal
Castles, cameras, and telegraphy — ancient and modern in Thomas Hardy's A Laodicean By Dr Andrzej Diniejko, on The Victorian Web.
Period Western Union Telegram A template for mocking up your own Western Union telegram. On Propnomicon.
GB Selection of 6 Telegrams from Victorian Era A photograph on Delcampe.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
A few facts:
STOP Technically, Sherlock Holmes was a big fan of e-mail.
“But wait a minute,” one might ask, “they didn’t have e-mail in the Victorian era, did they?”
Well, actually, they did. Sort of.
E-mail. Electronic mail. Mail sent via cables.
Sure, there wasn’t a computer at the end of the cable in Sherlock Holmes’s time. Instead of a machine decoding signals and passing it to a screen, a human being decoded signals and passed it to a delivery messenger. Both the screen and the delivery messenger then relay the message to the reader. One may be in binary code and the other in Morse code, but the old-fashioned telegram was, strictly speaking, electronic mail. [Sherlock Peoria]
STOP In 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone developed the electric telegraph which used an electric current to move magnetic needles and thus transmit messages in code. The first operational telegraph system linked Euston station and Camden town, and from there it spread all over the railway network, used both to carry messages and to control signalling.
The technology of the telegraph rapidly expanded… With instruments in every post office, the telegraph, and its visible offspring, the telegram, personal communication on a scale hitherto inconceivable became commonplace.
A telegraph cable was laid across the Channel in 1851, followed by others across the Irish and North Seas. In 1866 Brunel's huge ship, the Great Eastern, laid a durable telegraph cable across the Atlantic. The global network spread rapidly, with many countries establishing their own systems. Colonial, military and commercial implications were quickly appreciated. By 1878 Britain had constructed two overland and one maritime telegraph links to India, part of a network that by the end of the century had reached almost every corner of the world. [Paul Atterbury]
STOP An electrical telegraph was independently developed and patented in the United States in 1837 by Samuel Morse. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signalling alphabet with Morse. The first telegram in the United States was sent by Morse on 11 January 1838, across two miles (3 km) of wire at Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey, although it was only later, in 1844, that he sent the message "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" from the Capitol in Washington to the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore…
The Morse telegraphic apparatus was officially adopted as the standard for European telegraphy in 1851. Only Great Britain with its extensive overseas empire kept the needle telegraph of Cooke and Wheatstone. [Wikipedia]
STOP The telegraph companies charged for their service by the number of words in a message, with a maximum of 15 characters per word for a plain-language telegram, and 10 per word for one written in code. The [telegram] style developed to minimize costs but still convey the message clearly and unambiguously...
The average length of a telegram in the 1900s in the US was 11.93 words; more than half of the messages were 10 words or fewer. According to another study, the mean length of the telegrams sent in the UK before 1950 was 14.6 words or 78.8 characters. [Wikipedia]
STOP ...the Victorian version of e-mail was slightly more expensive than the modern [email] version. When Holmes paid for “a five shilling reply,” he was paying close to twenty-five bucks in modern American cash. [Sherlock Peoria]
STOP Telegraph Offices are, as a rule, open from 8 am, to 8 p.m. on week-days, and from 8 a.m. to 10 am. on Sundays. At the following offices, however, there is attendance continuously during the day and night, both on weekdays and Sundays.
LONDON OFFICES. Central Telegraph Station, St. Martin’s-let-Grand, E.C.; Paddington Station (G.W.R. Co.’s office), W. ; St. Pancras (Midland), NW.; Victoria Station (LC. & D.R.), S.W.; West Strand, W.C.
COUNTRY OFFICES —England—Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff; Derby, Exeter, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Norwich, Nottingham, Plymouth, Sheffield, Southampton. [Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879, quoted on The Dictionary of Victorian London]
STOP [In 1901] Telegrams may be sent to all parts of the United Kingdom (U.K.) at the rate of 6d. for the first twelve words, and one half-penny for each additional word; addresses are charged for. The minimum cost of foreign telegrams is 10d.
Cablegrams (i.e. messages by one of the trans-atlantic cables) may be sent from Europe to North America (fee: 1s. to 1/8 per word of 10 letters), and to other parts of the globe. [The Victorianist]
STOP If you needed to send someone a message, you would go to your local post office or telegraph office and fill in a telegram form…
Once you’d … created your written telegram, the person behind the counter would have counted up how many words you’d used and charged you for those words. It would have then have been sent, either – if it was a larger office – through a pneumatic tube system to the telegraph office, or – if it was a smaller office – it would have either have been telegraphed or telephoned to the nearest telegraph office for transmission to the distant end.
In towns and cities, the larger post offices used a pneumatic tube system. The written telegram message was folded up, and fed into a little container. The container was then pushed into a brass tube. When the door to the tube closed, the force from compressed air whizzed the container to the telegraph room in another part of the building, or to a nearby telegraph office. [Connected Earth]
STOP In the mid 19th century several private telegraph companies were established in the UK… The responsibility for the 'electric telegraphs' was officially transferred to the GPO [General Post Office] on Friday, 4 February 1870.
Overseas telegraphs did not fall within the monopoly. The private telegraph companies that already existed were bought out. The new combined telegraph service had 1,058 telegraph offices in towns and cities and 1,874 offices at railway stations. 6,830,812 telegrams were transmitted in 1869 producing revenue of £550,000. [Wikipedia]
STOP The Electric Telegraphs throughout the Kingdom being now national property, are managed by the General Post Office: the head office being in St. Martin's-le-Grand, London (see General Post Office). More than 300 branch offices are now distributed through London, so that no quarter or neighbourhood is far distant from one. By means of the London Postal Telegraph messages may be sent in a very short time from any part of London, through 400 or 500 miles of wires carried over the tops of the houses, and under the streets. The charge is 1s. for 20 words exclusive of addresses of sender and receiver - increasing at a rate of 3d. per 5 words beyond that number-to any part of the United Kingdom. Foreign telegrams are charged at various rates (see Postal Guide). [Murray's Handbook to London As It Is, 1879, quoted on The Dictionary of Victorian London]
STOP Women in telegraphy have been evident since the 1840s. The introduction of practical systems of telegraphy in the 1840s led to the creation of a new occupational category, the telegrapher, telegraphist or telegraph operator. Duties of the telegrapher included sending and receiving telegraphic messages, known as telegrams, using a variety of signaling systems, and routing of trains for the railroads. While telegraphy is often viewed as a males-only occupation, women were also employed as telegraph operators from its earliest days...
Women began to work for a number of private telegraph companies in England in the 1850s, including the Electric Telegraph Company. The Telegraph School for Women was established in London in 1860. The Queen's Institute for the Training and Employment of Educated Women began classes in telegraphy in Dublin in 1862; its graduates were employed by the Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company. Telegraphers in England used the Wheatstone-Cooke system of telegraphy as well as Morse code for transmission of messages. The number of women employed as telegraphists increased after the telegraph service was taken over by the British Post Office in 1870; in that year, 1535 out of 4913, or 31 percent of all operators, were women. [Wikipedia]
STOP These wages reflect weekly pay in the mid- to late '60s...
Mail Coach Guard ... 10/0 + tips
Female telegraph clerk ... 8/0
London artisans ... 36/0
London laborers ... 20/0
Farm hands ... 14/0
Sailors ... 15/0
Seaman on steamers ... 16/4 [James Skipper and George P. Landow]
STOP In the United Kingdom, Ireland, United States and other countries around the world, a telegram messenger, more often known as a telegram delivery boy, telegraph boy or telegram boy was a young male employed to deliver telegrams, usually on bicycle. In the United Kingdom and Ireland telegram boys were employed by the Post Office…
Telegram boys became popular after the Post Office took over control of inland telegraphs from the railways and private telegraph companies. Many of the boys employed by these services to deliver telegrams transferred to the Post Office. In some respects the life of a telegram boy was not unlike that of someone completing military service. They were expected to behave in a manner befitting one who wore the uniform of the Queen, and were required to complete a daily drill. [Wikipedia]
STOP ...during the Crimean War the ability of the telegraph to report events shortly after they occurred radically reconfigured newspapers, creating the modern notion of fast-breaking news. Whereas before the telegraph newspapers would store information from other sources, particularly other newspapers, and slowly dole it out as needed to fill pages, the telegraph’s ability to speed up the reporting of events created a desire to learn about events as quickly as possible and led to the importance of the newspaper scoop — of being the first with a story. [Tom Standage]
STOP Before she embarked on her Diamond Jubilee procession on June 22, 1897, Queen Victoria stopped at the telegraph room in Buckingham Palace. She pressed a button, and within minutes the Central Telegraph Office relayed her message to every country of the Empire. “Thank my beloved people,” it read. “May God bless them.” [Tom Rowley] ...she was speaking to nearly a quarter of the population of the earth. [Liza Picard]
Some useful resources:
Telegrams On Sherlock Peoria.
Victorian Technology By Paul Atterbury, on the BBC website.
Telegram style On Wikipedia.
Telegraphy On Wikipedia.
Electrical telegraph On Wikipedia.
Telegraph Offices On the Dictionary of Victorian London.
The Dictionary of Victorian London This is the main index. Click on ‘Communications’, and then on ‘Telegraph / Wireless’.
Victorian Telecommunications An index of articles on The Victorian Web.
Post, Telegraph, Telephone & Electricity: Communicating in 1901 By The Amateur Casual, on The Victorianist.
Travel, transport and communications Brief mention of the electric telegraph. By Liza Picard, on the British Library website.
Telegram system ends. Stop. Replaced by text messages. Stop By Tom Rowley, on the Telegraph website. Looks at the history of the telegram.
Transcript for How a telegraph was sent – What happened in the post office room On Connected Earth.
Letters in London: Communication and correspondence in the nineteenth-century city Contains a section titled: The telegraph and the position of women in Victorian London: The Telegraph Girl and In the Cage. By Frances Evans, on The Victorian Web.
Samuel Morse On Wikipedia.
General Post Office: Telegraph On Wikipedia.
Post - Delivery Times and Postal Regulations There is a mention at the end of telegraph offices. On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
Post Office Statistics On The Postal Museum.
Women in telegraphy On Wikipedia.
Wages and Cost of Living in the Victorian Era By James Skipper and George P. Landow, on The Victorian Web. Includes ‘Female telegraph clerk’.
Women's Work in the Victorian Era Includes a Victorian illustration of female telegraph operators. By Christy Carlyle, on Romancing the Genres.
How the Telegraph Left Its Mark on Women's History (Specifically US women’s history.) By Cristen Conger, on Stuff Mom Never Told You.
Gender & the Office On Early Office Museum. There is a section headed: Employment of Women in Telegraph and Telephone Operating Rooms.
Telegram messenger On Wikipedia.
Dignity and Impudence A brief look at how the telegraph changed newspapers. On The Victorian Web.
Communcations Networks: Postal Service, Telegraph, LAN, and Internet By Catherine J. Golden, on The Victorian Web.
Women as Telegraphists By Cassienewland, on Scrambled Messages.
Submarine Telegraphy Timeline By Diane Greco Josefowicz, on The Victorian Web.
The Laying of Submarine Cable — The Triumph of Brunel's "Great Eastern" on 27 July 1866 By Philip Allingham, on The Victorian Web.
Get Them on the Blower By Long Branch Mike, on Lapsed Historian. A look at telegrams sent by pneumatic tubes, rather than the electric telegraph.
Paper Hearts: Victorian Correspondence On Victorian Trading Co.
Transatlantic Cable On the Engineering and Technology History Wiki.
Tag Archives: Telegram On The British Postal Museum & Archive blog. All posts tagged with ‘telegram’. NB Most of the posts are not about the Victorian and Edwardian periods.
Uncovering Cleveland Street: Sexuality, Surveillance and late-Victorian Scandal By Katie Hindmarch-Watson, on Notches. A look at telegraph boys’ involvement in prostitution.
The Cleveland Street Scandal
Castles, cameras, and telegraphy — ancient and modern in Thomas Hardy's A Laodicean By Dr Andrzej Diniejko, on The Victorian Web.
Period Western Union Telegram A template for mocking up your own Western Union telegram. On Propnomicon.
GB Selection of 6 Telegrams from Victorian Era A photograph on Delcampe.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2017-03-26 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-26 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-26 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-01 10:15 pm (UTC)I would be a shame not to point out skygiants' review of "The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers". Likewise, her follow-up review of "Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes", which she characterizes as "probably the most adorable rom-com to be written in 1879."
Also, on the topic of women telegraph operators (albeit in a non-Victorian decade on a non-Victorian continent), are you familiar with The Hazards of Helen? It's a silent film series starring a railway telegraph operator who has many heroic adventures. Helen Holmes starred (and did her own stunts, and wrote the scripts, and managed the production company). There was a lovely vid for it during last year's Festivids.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 12:16 am (UTC)And I've now read the first chapter of Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes. It is rather sweet - I think I'll carry on with that ^^
I hadn't heard of The Hazards of Helen - such an appropriately named star for our comm ^__^ I greatly enjoyed the fanvid - I was rather taken aback that someone would be making vids of films from that era. And I've had a look at one of the episodes too: The Wild Engine ^__^
no subject
Date: 2017-05-06 10:05 pm (UTC)Because... lack of an active fandom? Or something more technological? They do get made now and again. Equinox Exchange, which just had its reveals, had a vid based on a 1902 sci-fi flick. ;-)
Bah, the computer ate my earlier effort at a comment, but:
I will love you forever (is that too forward?) for introducing me to the Engineering Technology and History Wiki. I was pleasantly flabbergasted at just how perfectly attuned that article about laying the transatlantic cable was for knowing and explaining the interesting technological points, and had to click through and see who was hosting it. A history wiki sponsored by the various engineering professional societies EEEEEEE!!!!! <3 <3 <3
The Wheatstone and Cooke telegraph system is fascinating. (Did you have a look? The display is like an electric Ouija board!) And I am delighted to discover that the transatlantic setup was a blend of the two systems: the messages were encoded in morse (the more informationally efficient of the two), but were transmitted by Wheatstone's alternating voltages (which was the more robust signal over that distance).
The "Uncovering Cleveland Street" article states that the Fenian bombings fueled the growth of postal policing. Unfortunately, the linked article goes to a paywall, and I'm not finding much of anything to suggest what the connection was between the bombings and the post. (The bombs seem to have been planted/dropped, not mailed?) Do you know what that connection was?
You know, I'd always imagined that telegraph clerks spent an awful lot of time counting out the words in a message, one by one, but that picture of six telegrams makes it perfectly clear that they didn't. (Who knew!?) (Every literate person in the era, that's who!)
Speaking of things everyone knew: I laughed to see the meticulous description of pneumatic tubes! But I probably haven't seen one in operation since ATMs became commonplace, so I suppose it's getting on to being one of those things that need describing nowadays.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-09 11:11 pm (UTC)I will love you forever (is that too forward?) for introducing me to the Engineering Technology and History Wiki. Always happy to assist other people in their enthusiasms ^___^
The Wheatstone and Cooke telegraph system is fascinating. (Did you have a look? The display is like an electric Ouija board!) I did see the photographs on Wikipedia - I love your description of the display ^_^
The "Uncovering Cleveland Street" article states that the Fenian bombings fueled the growth of postal policing... Do you know what that connection was? I'm afraid I don't - perhaps it was some kind of preventative measure..?
Speaking of things everyone knew: I laughed to see the meticulous description of pneumatic tubes! But I probably haven't seen one in operation since ATMs became commonplace, so I suppose it's getting on to being one of those things that need describing nowadays. D'you know, I knew about them, but I don't think I've ever seen them in real life. But, yes, I often get that now - having to explain things to younger people that in our generation was just common knowledge ^_^
no subject
Date: 2017-05-10 02:05 am (UTC):: But, yes, I often get that now - having to explain things to younger people that in our generation was just common knowledge ^_^ ::
Hah, very much so. That's one of the challenges of writing ACD fic, in my opinion: how much the technology can shift in just a few decades.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-11 09:32 pm (UTC)In fact, I found the whole channel pretty interesting - I've now looked at quite a few of their videos ^__^