Fake news and misinformation. We are taught that this is a modern problem brought on by the Internet. Actually in the Civil War era, it was worse. And at the heart of that fake news was a name familiar to you from my previous speech --- Thomas Alva Edison.
It was the age of the telegraph. No longer did it take weeks or months for news to spread around the country, it could happen in a single day. To make it all work, the country needed lots of telegraphers. People to send and copy (or receive) Morse Code dot dot dot dash dash dash. Between ages 15 and 17, young Thomas Edison worked as a journeyman telegrapher. That means he took lots of short time jobs in cities across the country.
He got a job at the Western Union office in New York City. On Edison’s first day, his co-workers set up a prank. They told him to copy an incoming news story. On the other end of the was the world champion telegrapher, able to send Morse code faster than any mortal being could copy. He started slow and gradually started sending faster and faster. But not matter how fast he sent, Edison copied with no problem. Eventually, the champion began slurring his words and running them together. Edison had no difficulty correcting all the error on the fly. Finally, Edison caught on to the joke. He interrupted and sent a message back. It said, “Say, young man, change off and send with your other foot.”
Here’s how news actually spread in those days. A politician in Washington would give a speech. Often his language was poor, or he would be drunk while speaking. In the gallery, one or more shorthand takers wrote down what he said. (Young people in this audience may need to look up what that word shorthand means.) But they didn’t write it word-for-word. They translated clumsy language into eloquent oratory. They took their notes to the telegraph office. But the telegrapher added his own improvements as he sent it. That got the message out to maybe 4 receiving stations. Each of those stations copied the message down (including the recipient’s embellishments) and resent it (including the sender’s improvements) to 4 other stations. So it went, 4, 16, 64, 256 stations until it reached every corner of the country. From the stations, the paper copy went to the newspaper, where the reporters wrote a story using their own words to describe what the politician said. Therefore, every town in the country got their own unique version of the news of the day. Doesn’t that remind you of the child’s game where a story is whispered to the first child, who then whispers it to the second child and so on? So now you know how each town in the country got different versions of the news of the day.
At age 17, Edison was still so shy that if a 17 year old girl entered the room he would fall over furniture and became speechless. But he was at the apex of his telegrapher career. I’m going to tell you about his demise as a telegrapher.
He took a job at a Washington newspaper. After 3AM when the paper was put to bed, the reporters gave Edison access to their notes of the day. Only a tiny percent of those notes actually created news stories, but Edison read all of them. He knew what every congressman, every Senator, said in every meeting all day long. He considered himself to be the best informed person in the whole country about the goings on of the government. One night, he was copying a story about an important vote that day in Congress when the telegraph wire broke. No problem thought Edison, so he fabricated the rest of the story. He said who voted aye, who voted nay and what the leaders said to the press after the vote. He was confident that his account would be a believable enough to fool the whole country. ---- Well, in the morning he came to regret that, because the important vote had been postponed.
Ladies and gentlemen. In modern times, we love to complain about our favorite villain, Vladimir Putin. Little did you know that Putin follows in the footsteps of my personal hero. Thomas Alva Edison.
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