

A Geek Of 1909 - mikecane
http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/a-geek-of-1909/

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nkurz
Tom Standage's "The Victorian Internet" has a lot of great detail about the
culture of the telegraph operator and how it compares to the internet culture
today.

"Wandering workers who went from job to job were known as 'boomers.' There
were no formal job interviews; applicants were simply sat down on a busy wire
to see if they could handle it. Since they could find work almost anywhere,
many boomers had an itinerant lifestyle; a great number of them suffered from
alcoholism or mental health disorders. In a sense, the telegraph community was
a meritocracy --- it didn't matter who you were as long as you could send and
receive messages quickly --- which was one of the reasons that women and
children were readily admitted to the profession." p. 140

"Indeed, despite the strange customs and the often curious lifestyle of many
operators, telegraphy was regarded as an attractive profession, offering the
hope of rapid social advancement and fueling the expansion of the middle
class. Courses, books, and pamphlets teaching Morse to beginners flourished.
For the ambitious, it provided an escape route from small towns to the big
cities, and for those who liked to move around, it meant guaranteed work
wherever they went." p.143

Substitute some current computer language for Morse and you could definitely
be talking about the present.

[http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-
Nineteen...](http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteenth-
line/dp/0802716040)

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phreeza
I wonder if this is the same Lynn Marsh?
[http://www.google.com/patents?id=3QxXAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=3QxXAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=lynn%20marsh&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q&f=false)

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harshpotatoes
"Lynn has worked a newspaper wire for an eight-hour turn, but he prefers the
click of the railroad message to that of the newspaper story."

Very cool. I wish I could have found an internship/job like that when I was
11.

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eru
Andrew Carnegie (the later steel magnate) was also a superb telegrapher at a
young age. He was one of the first to telegraph directly by ear, instead of
using a ticker, according to a biography.

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klbarry
This is very true. He also read voraciously from the library and was a huge
momma's boy.

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timdoug
Source:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=ow7OAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA53...](http://books.google.com/books?id=ow7OAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53)

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cullenking
I wonder what he felt like when only a few years later he was obsolete.

