Tales From The Black Chambers
THE MAKING AND BREAKING OF CODES AND CIPHERS HAS PLAYED AN EXCITING AND OFTEN CRUCIAL PART IN AMERICAN HISTORYClifford B. HicksApril 1973By choice, cryptographers are an unsung and anonymous lot. In...
View ArticleThe (almost) Russian-American Telegraph
Phillip H. AultJune 1975As Lincoln lay dying from an assassin’s bullet across the street from Ford’s Theatre through the grim night of April 14, 1865, frequent bulletins on his sinking condition...
View ArticleO.k. The Last Word
When did we start saying it? And why?Richard H. HopperDecember 1984 FROM THE OIL FIELDS of Indonesia to the tulip fields of Holland to the rice fields of Brazil, a traveler overhears conversations...
View ArticleHindsight, Foresight, And No Sight
Peter BaidaJune/july 1985Late in 1876, William Orton, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, rejected an opportunity to purchase from Alexander Graham Bell and his associates all patents...
View ArticlePost Haste
The urge to move documents as fast as possible has always been a national pre-occupation, because it has always been a necessity. Fax and Federal Express are just the latest among many innovations for...
View ArticleWhen Our Ancestors Became Us
In 1820 their daily existence was practically medieval; thirty years later many of them were living the modern lifeJohn Steele GordonDecember 1989It is a commonplace that the American Revolution...
View ArticleWhat Hath God Wrought
The telegraph was an even more dramatic innovation in its day than the InternetDaniel Walker HoweWinter 2010On May 24, 1844, Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, seated in the chambers of the U.S. Supreme...
View ArticleBilly Mitchell In Alaska
Early in his military career, the apostle of air power blazed a trail through the wilderness, forging the last link in a telegraph line to the edge of the Bering SeaBrigadier General William...
View ArticleInventing The Telegraph
December 1984Incidents in history are usually significant only in combination with a succession of other incidents. Isolated incidents can assume importance only when they summarize an epoch in one...
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