The Information - James Gleick [216]
♦ “DISTANCE AND TIME HAVE BEEN SO CHANGED”: Quoted in Iwan Rhys Morus, “ ‘The Nervous System of Britain,’” 463.
♦ LIEUTENANT CHARLES WILKES: Charles Wilkes to S. F. B. Morse, 13 June 1844, in Alfred Vail, The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph, 60.
♦ “PROFESSOR MORSE’S TELEGRAPH IS NOT ONLY AN ERA”: Quoted in Adam Frank, “Valdemar’s Tongue, Poe’s Telegraphy,” ELH 72 (2005): 637.
♦ “WHAT MIGHT NOT BE GATHERED SOME DAY”: Andrew Wynter, “The Electric Telegraph,” 133.
♦ “MUCH IMPORTANT INFORMATION … CONSISTING OF MESSAGES”: Alfred Vail, The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph, viii.
♦ THE GIVING, PRINTING, STAMPING, OR OTHERWISE TRANSMITTING: Agreement between Cooke and Wheatstone, 1843, in William Fothergill Cooke, The Electric Telegraph, 46.
♦ “THE DIFFICULTY OF FORMING A CLEAR CONCEPTION”: “The Telegraph,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 336.
♦ “TELEGRAPHIC COMPANIES ARE RUNNING A RACE”: Andrew Wynter, Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers: Being Some of the Chisel-Marks of Our Industrial and Scientific Progress (London: Robert Hardwicke, 1863), 363.
♦ “THEY STRING AN INSTRUMENT AGAINST THE SKY”: Robert Frost, “The Line-Gang,” 1920.
♦ “A NET-WORK OF NERVES OF IRON WIRE”: Littell’s Living Age 6, no. 63 (26 July 1845): 194.
♦ “THE WHOLE NET-WORK OF WIRES”: “The Telegraph,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 333.
♦ “THE TIME IS NOT DISTANT”: Andrew Wynter, Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers, 371.
♦ “THE TELEGRAPHIC STYLE BANISHES”: Andrew Wynter, “The Electric Telegraph,” 132.
♦ “WE EARLY INVENTED A SHORT-HAND”: Alexander Jones, Historical Sketch of the Electric Telegraph, 123.
♦ “THE GREAT ADVANTAGE”: Alfred Vail, The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph, 46.
♦ THE SECRET CORRESPONDING VOCABULARY: Francis O. J. Smith, THE SECRET CORRESPONDING VOCABULARY; Adapted for Use to Morse’s Electro-Magnetic Telegraph: And Also in Conducting Written Correspondence, Transmitted by the Mails, or Otherwise (Portland, Maine: Thurston, Ilsley, 1845).
♦ THE A B C UNIVERSAL COMMERCIAL ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH CODE: Examples from William Clauson-Thue, THE A B C UNIVERSAL COMMERCIAL ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH CODE, 4th ed. (London: Eden Fisher, 1880).
♦ “IT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO THE AUTHOR’S KNOWLEDGE”: Ibid., iv.
♦ “TO GUARD AGAINST MISTAKES OR DELAYS”: Primrose v. Western Union Tel. Co., 154 U.S. 1 (1894); “Not Liable for Errors in Ciphers,” The New York Times, 27 May 1894, 1.
♦ AN ANONYMOUS LITTLE BOOK: Later reprinted, with the author identified, as John Wilkins, Mercury: Or the Secret and Swift Messenger. Shewing, How a Man May With Privacy and Speed Communicate His Thoughts to a Friend At Any Distance, 3rd ed. (London: John Nicholson, 1708).
♦ “HE WAS A VERY INGENIOUS MAN”: John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Richard Barber (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1982), 324.
♦ “HOW A MAN MAY WITH THE GREATEST SWIFTNESS”: John Wilkins, Mercury: Or the Secret and Swift Messenger, 62.
♦ “WHATEVER IS CAPABLE OF A COMPETENT DIFFERENCE”: Ibid., 69.
♦ THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE DILETTANTES: David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968), 189.
♦ “WE CAN SCARCELY IMAGINE A TIME”: “A Few Words on Secret Writing,” Graham’s Magazine, July 1841; Edgar Allan Poe, Essays and Reviews (New York: Library of America, 1984), 1277.
♦ “THE SOUL IS A CYPHER”: The Literati of New York (1846), in Edgar Allan Poe, Essays and Reviews, 1172.
♦ A BRIDGE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE OCCULT: Cf. William F. Friedman, “Edgar Allan Poe, Cryptographer,” American Literature 8, no. 3 (1936): 266–80; Joseph Wood Krutch, Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius (New York: Knopf, 1926).
♦ A “KEY-ALPHABET” AND A “MESSAGE-ALPHABET”: Lewis Carroll, “The Telegraph-Cipher,” printed card 8 x 12 cm., Berol Collection, New York University Library.
♦ “ONE OF THE MOST SINGULAR CHARACTERISTICS”: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864), 235.
♦ POLYALPHABETIC CIPHER KNOWN AS THE VIGENÈRE: Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking (London: