Nov 13, 2014 02:08 AM
The Golden Age of Telegraph Literature
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology...ingle.html
EXCERPT: [...] William John Johnston, a telegraph operator and trade publisher who collected and sold stories, poems, and plays written by and for operators in the 1870s and 1880s as a part of his journalistic enterprise. The style of the writing—as with “A Centennial-Telegraphic Romance”—hasn’t entirely stood up to the test of time. Henry James and Anthony Trollope, among many others, wrote about telegraph operators with a good deal more polish. But there’s something incredibly modern about these amateur stories and the way they handle technology, the influence of corporations, gender, and love in the time of hyperconnection.
[...] Romance along the wire is a major theme. The telegraph office was an exciting, if often frustrating place for women to find skilled work in the 19th century. Many women ran offices and worked alongside men as “first-class” operators. This brought men and women into contact on a semi-equal footing and—with the added thrill of telegraphic anonymity—enabled flirtation, misunderstandings, betrayal, and even occasional lasting love, at least if the many marriages reported between operators are any measure.
Many of the romantic stories in The Operator, however, read like truly disastrous episodes of Catfish. After Paul’s object of telegraphic flirtation in “A Slight Mistake” turns out to be stout and old, he hides under an assumed name and “never [again] speaks to anyone on the wire unless the conversation is purely of a business nature.” In one of the many quite racist stories in the literature, “Love Struck by Lightning,” a female operator flirts with operator Elijah and eventually tricks him into kissing someone he thinks is her, but is actually Dinah, “a speckable cullered lady.” Disgusted, he ends up “a confirmed bachelor.” Rena poses as a man on the wire in the gender-bending “Playing With Fire,” only to find out that her supposedly female sweetheart is actually a dashing young gent. Still she refuses him and dies “a few years later.” Hammie, in “Hamilton Doless,” who discovers that his intended is already spoken for, dies “a few months after, another victim to ‘the tender passion.’ ”
Then there’s Thayer’s novel Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes, which Johnston published first in 1880. Nattie and Clem, two operators, flirt along the wires but are thwarted by their own clumsy physical presences when they meet in person. (As one telegraphic lover complains in a different story, “To speak over the wire was bliss, but to speak face to face, misery.”) They find it easier to continue their romance in dots and dashes and set up a private wire between their two rooms in the same lodging house. “It is nicer talking on the wire, isn’t it?” Clem remarks....
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology...ingle.html
EXCERPT: [...] William John Johnston, a telegraph operator and trade publisher who collected and sold stories, poems, and plays written by and for operators in the 1870s and 1880s as a part of his journalistic enterprise. The style of the writing—as with “A Centennial-Telegraphic Romance”—hasn’t entirely stood up to the test of time. Henry James and Anthony Trollope, among many others, wrote about telegraph operators with a good deal more polish. But there’s something incredibly modern about these amateur stories and the way they handle technology, the influence of corporations, gender, and love in the time of hyperconnection.
[...] Romance along the wire is a major theme. The telegraph office was an exciting, if often frustrating place for women to find skilled work in the 19th century. Many women ran offices and worked alongside men as “first-class” operators. This brought men and women into contact on a semi-equal footing and—with the added thrill of telegraphic anonymity—enabled flirtation, misunderstandings, betrayal, and even occasional lasting love, at least if the many marriages reported between operators are any measure.
Many of the romantic stories in The Operator, however, read like truly disastrous episodes of Catfish. After Paul’s object of telegraphic flirtation in “A Slight Mistake” turns out to be stout and old, he hides under an assumed name and “never [again] speaks to anyone on the wire unless the conversation is purely of a business nature.” In one of the many quite racist stories in the literature, “Love Struck by Lightning,” a female operator flirts with operator Elijah and eventually tricks him into kissing someone he thinks is her, but is actually Dinah, “a speckable cullered lady.” Disgusted, he ends up “a confirmed bachelor.” Rena poses as a man on the wire in the gender-bending “Playing With Fire,” only to find out that her supposedly female sweetheart is actually a dashing young gent. Still she refuses him and dies “a few years later.” Hammie, in “Hamilton Doless,” who discovers that his intended is already spoken for, dies “a few months after, another victim to ‘the tender passion.’ ”
Then there’s Thayer’s novel Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes, which Johnston published first in 1880. Nattie and Clem, two operators, flirt along the wires but are thwarted by their own clumsy physical presences when they meet in person. (As one telegraphic lover complains in a different story, “To speak over the wire was bliss, but to speak face to face, misery.”) They find it easier to continue their romance in dots and dashes and set up a private wire between their two rooms in the same lodging house. “It is nicer talking on the wire, isn’t it?” Clem remarks....