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Feb. 12th, 2013 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsToday I'm going to talk about TELEGRAPHY.
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers is one of the recs I got from you guys when I asked for nonfiction pop history books; it was a good one! The premise is basically "A Brief History of Telegraphy WHICH IS BASICALLY THE EXACT SAME THING AS THE INTERNET JUST SO YOU KNOW." I do not actually think telegraphy is the EXACT SAME THING as the Internet but I enjoyed the brief history of telegraphy so much that I don't care.
A fun telegraphy fact: the first long-distance signal tower was built during the French Revolution! Then an angry mob burned it down because they thought people were using it to communicate with royalists.
Another fun telegraphy fact: so as telegraphy started catching on, everybody started wanting to use codes to protect their info, right? Except it was a HUGE PAIN for telegraph operators to accurately send "xy73yu9" instead of normal human language, and the telegraph office started charging extra for annoyingly stupid secret codes. So everyone started up coming with their own hilariously specific codes, in which, for example, "ENVELOPE" meant "GREAT SWARMS OF LOCUSTS HAVE APPEARED AND RAVAGED THE CROPS," or the word "FESTIVAL" meant "A CASE OF THREE MAMMOTH TORPEDOES."
(This also caused a lot of embarrassment when national intelligence offices would spend ages breaking a telegraph code between two suspected spies only to discover that they were actually just writing each other sexy letters.)
AND SPEAKING OF ROMANCE, the codes chapter was great, but even more entertaining was the one on long-distance telegraph romance!
I mean first of all there is the lady who was getting forced into an unwanted marriage, so she told her boyfriend, who was getting shipped off to New York by her angry father, to go grab a priest and stand by the telegraph at the appointed time, and then she tapped out "I DO" in Morse Code, and her father was like "THAT DOESN'T COUNT" and the legal authorities were like "er, yes it does," and then people could get married by telegraph. That was awesome.
But even better than that was telegraph operators in different stations falling madly in love with each other via Morse Code messages, which apparently was a thing that happened ALL THE TIME. Because, you know, you're working twelve hours a day, there's a lot of dead time on the wires, you're bored! You get to talking! And, unlike in a lot of other jobs in the mid-nineteenth-century, there were LADIES doing it and BEING REALLY GOOD AT IT -- and we all know competence is sexy. And also, unlike in any other area of life, they were under no obligation to tell anyone they were ladies!
The best story in the book was the one about a dude in a tiny outpost in the middle of nowhere who made buddies with a jolly fellow called Mat in a station in California. They joked around and planned imaginary vacations and fishing trips and so on, and had a running joke about big rubber boots, and finally they were going to meet up, except on the day of, our protagonist came down with a DELIRIOUS FEVER.
Two days later, dude wakes up, there is a friendly lady taking care of him! She sticks around for a few days while he convalesces, and he's like "Gosh, you're amazing, I think I'm in love!" And she's like "man, could you really be in love with a girl called Mat who wears big rubber boots?"
And of course he is like "MAT buddy you never MENTIONED the lady part GOLLY" (and presumably also "gosh now I feel embarrassed about all those off-color jokes we used to trade back and forth") and they live happily ever after. :D
So what I want to know is, where are all my telegraph romances that play around with the semi-anonymous culture of telegraph operators and gender and expectations and people falling in love with other people for their brains and competence with tapping in Morse Code? This is a rich vein, people! MINE IT.
(I might have already talkedinnerbrat into writing me lesbian telegraph romance.)
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers is one of the recs I got from you guys when I asked for nonfiction pop history books; it was a good one! The premise is basically "A Brief History of Telegraphy WHICH IS BASICALLY THE EXACT SAME THING AS THE INTERNET JUST SO YOU KNOW." I do not actually think telegraphy is the EXACT SAME THING as the Internet but I enjoyed the brief history of telegraphy so much that I don't care.
A fun telegraphy fact: the first long-distance signal tower was built during the French Revolution! Then an angry mob burned it down because they thought people were using it to communicate with royalists.
Another fun telegraphy fact: so as telegraphy started catching on, everybody started wanting to use codes to protect their info, right? Except it was a HUGE PAIN for telegraph operators to accurately send "xy73yu9" instead of normal human language, and the telegraph office started charging extra for annoyingly stupid secret codes. So everyone started up coming with their own hilariously specific codes, in which, for example, "ENVELOPE" meant "GREAT SWARMS OF LOCUSTS HAVE APPEARED AND RAVAGED THE CROPS," or the word "FESTIVAL" meant "A CASE OF THREE MAMMOTH TORPEDOES."
(This also caused a lot of embarrassment when national intelligence offices would spend ages breaking a telegraph code between two suspected spies only to discover that they were actually just writing each other sexy letters.)
AND SPEAKING OF ROMANCE, the codes chapter was great, but even more entertaining was the one on long-distance telegraph romance!
I mean first of all there is the lady who was getting forced into an unwanted marriage, so she told her boyfriend, who was getting shipped off to New York by her angry father, to go grab a priest and stand by the telegraph at the appointed time, and then she tapped out "I DO" in Morse Code, and her father was like "THAT DOESN'T COUNT" and the legal authorities were like "er, yes it does," and then people could get married by telegraph. That was awesome.
But even better than that was telegraph operators in different stations falling madly in love with each other via Morse Code messages, which apparently was a thing that happened ALL THE TIME. Because, you know, you're working twelve hours a day, there's a lot of dead time on the wires, you're bored! You get to talking! And, unlike in a lot of other jobs in the mid-nineteenth-century, there were LADIES doing it and BEING REALLY GOOD AT IT -- and we all know competence is sexy. And also, unlike in any other area of life, they were under no obligation to tell anyone they were ladies!
The best story in the book was the one about a dude in a tiny outpost in the middle of nowhere who made buddies with a jolly fellow called Mat in a station in California. They joked around and planned imaginary vacations and fishing trips and so on, and had a running joke about big rubber boots, and finally they were going to meet up, except on the day of, our protagonist came down with a DELIRIOUS FEVER.
Two days later, dude wakes up, there is a friendly lady taking care of him! She sticks around for a few days while he convalesces, and he's like "Gosh, you're amazing, I think I'm in love!" And she's like "man, could you really be in love with a girl called Mat who wears big rubber boots?"
And of course he is like "MAT buddy you never MENTIONED the lady part GOLLY" (and presumably also "gosh now I feel embarrassed about all those off-color jokes we used to trade back and forth") and they live happily ever after. :D
So what I want to know is, where are all my telegraph romances that play around with the semi-anonymous culture of telegraph operators and gender and expectations and people falling in love with other people for their brains and competence with tapping in Morse Code? This is a rich vein, people! MINE IT.
(I might have already talked
innerbrat into writing me lesbian telegraph romance.)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:33 pm (UTC)Pleasepleaseplease. *possibly whimpers a little*
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Date: 2013-02-12 04:54 pm (UTC)This is like internet dating... but with Morse Code...
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Date: 2013-02-12 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:54 pm (UTC)And I love the romance story with a great love.
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Date: 2013-02-12 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 05:10 pm (UTC)OMG yes pleeeeease.
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Date: 2013-02-13 02:39 am (UTC)I also love the story about the super annoying telegraph line of assholes, and there was one operator who was REALLY GOOD at handling them and getting them to act in a competent fashion, and the dude who covered her on her lunch breaks was like ". . . . wow, anyone who can deal with these jerks MUST BE AN ANGEL, MARRYING HER IMMEDIATELY."
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Date: 2013-02-12 11:12 pm (UTC)You have done well.
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Date: 2013-02-13 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-02-13 07:55 pm (UTC)then i would be happy to be persuaded to write some sort of historical lesbian romance fiction by you :)
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Date: 2013-02-13 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-02-22 02:15 am (UTC)