John Richardson

The Telephone

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The invention of the telephone was one of the most influential phenomena of its time. When it became known that people could communicate with each other from opposite ends of the US as if they were just a few feet away,  it sparked the interest and excitement of many. Soon people all over America would have the telephone in their lives and it only continued to grow. 

The date that the telephone, meaning tele- "far" and phone- "sound" was invented is not actually clear. Around the late 1800s, several people were working on creating a telephone and this lead to arguments in court, but in the end, Alexander Grahm Bell got his patent through first. So while it can be argued that Gham Bell may not have invented the first telephone, he did receive the patent. This lead to his team creating the American Bell Telephone company which later evolved to the American Telegraph and Telephone company. This name is more commonly known today as AT&T. In 1900 there were about 600,000 phones owned by people, and in just 10 years, this number had shot up to 5.8 million. AT&T had a monopoly in this industry and the effect of this company thriving continues all the way to the present day. In 1913, the Kingsbury Commitment was put into place. This was an agreement between AT&T and the US Attorney General to provide long-distance services to independent phone exchanges. By 1927, the transatlantic telephone cable was laid down. This connected phones from New York and London. This was now a global phenomenon. 

The telephone leads to so many things, such as the gramophone, the first wireless phone by Motorola, or the feeling of being connected from anywhere to help people transition from the city to the suburbs. However, the most direct effect is the job opportunities it provided. With the telephone came the switchboard. Telephone companies needed people to operate and manually connect incoming calls to the people they wanted to talk to. Operators mainly consisted of teenaged boys, but they seemed not to possess the right qualities for the job, such as politeness. Graham Bell suggested that women would be better for the job. In 1878, Emma Nutt became the first female operator. This sparked new job opportunities for women and pretty soon, this field was dominated by women. People enjoyed their "soothing" and polite voices better than the teenaged boys. However, women had to go through a heigh, and voice test to become an operator. They also got very little pay, earning just $10 a month working 54 hours a week. This lead to the women going on strike. The business came to a standstill and they had no choice but to give the women a wage increase. 

Elon.edu Imagining The Internet
History.com History Stories
Britannica.com Telphone
Time.com Emma Nutt

Cnet.com Telphone

John Richardson
G Block
The Truth About Thanksgiving 


After Halloween has ended, and all the candy is gone, the next thing everyone starts to think about is Thanksgiving. What’s not to love about Thanksgiving? The warm decorations like a cornucopia with corn and other foods spilling from it, or the turkeys, ranging from the most detailed sculptures to the kind you can make from your handprint. It is believed by many that these symbols of Thanksgiving like the turkey, the pilgrims, and Native Americans originated from the first Thanksgiving. However, much of the Thanksgiving story that people believe today may not have actually happened, or at least in the way it's being told. 

Most people believe that the first Thanksgiving happened in 1621 after the Pilgrims sailed over on the Mayflower and had a successful harvest. One can imagine the Native Americans and the Pilgrims sitting around a table eating turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, but the truth is, this story has many inaccuracies. The first one that should be addressed is that the Pilgrims didn’t actually call themselves Pilgrims. They were known as Separatists. The Second inaccuracy is that the Native Americans might not have actually been invited to the first Thanksgiving. The third is that there is no evidence that turkey was served and they didn’t have the ovens to make pumpkin pie. Finally, what we call the first Thanksgiving, wasn’t really the first Thanksgiving. It was very common in Native American culture to give thanks after a harvest that ended in success. 

Thanksgiving started to be made official around the time of the civil war. Hale stands out as one who was pushing Congress to make the fourth Thursday of November a holiday to give thanks. Hale wrote many letters to Congress regarding her wishes and by 1854, 30 states and US territories had jumped on board by celebrating this holiday, but it was not official yet. Finally Lincoln agreed to make Thanksgiving a national holiday because he thought it might help heal some of the wounds created by the civil war. 

One might ask themselves how all the misinformation about the “first” Thanksgiving came to be. Part of the blame is on the school textbooks. They did not provide a clear and accurate view of this holiday, but what really caused misinformation to spread was major food companies and the media. Adds were being created to cause people to associate Thanksgiving with certain foods. They also “implied” that many of these foods existed and were present at the first Thanksgiving when they weren't actually there. Even though these adds twisting the truth, they cause foods like turkey and cranberry sauce to sell around Thanksgiving time. Despite all the inaccuracies, the Thanksgiving holiday was created to give thanks and it has been a huge success in that regard. 


https://shannonselin.com/2016/11/thanksgiving-1800s/ 

NYTs: Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving is Wrong (Links to an external site.)

History.com:  Abraham Lincoln and the "Mother of Thanksgiving" (Links to an external site.)

Smithsonian:  The Invisible Way That Marketers Set the Menu for Your Thanksgiving Feast

https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2012/11/library-of-congress-primary-sources-and-thanksgiving/

12 years a slave

The New York Times writes that 12 Years a Slave stands out from the many movies about slavery because of its accuracy. The movie draws you in from the beginning as the main character, Solomen, has his freedom snatched from him and taken into slavery. They say the director constantly moves the film forward, so the audience does not get caught up in too many emotions; your attention is on Solomen and what is happening at that moment. They also tell us that Solomen's story provides a great "double perspective" because he was once a free man and a slave.

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Slave Narratives

I read about a girl that was born into slavery. She recalls the memories of her childhood and how that evolved into realizing she was a slave. While the act of slavery is undoubtedly immoral, not all slave owners treated their slaves in horrible ways. The slave by the name Linda was born into a household with her mother, grandmother, and brother. She describes her childhood as not being that bad because her mistress was nice to her. However, when the mistress passed away and Linda was transferred to another owner, she then realized that her happy times as a child were over. 

Are slaves more likely to stay in the owners family after the owner dies?

How old do slaves have to be to start working, and how are they taken care of when they are babies?

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Paraphrase Practice

This is a Paragraph from The Guardian about the movie Lincoln written by Peter Bradshaw 

"On two occasions, we see a flash of anger from the president, when his son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) wants to join the army against his parents' wishes, and when his wife confronts him about the unmentionable subject of their late son, and their unspeakable burden of grief and guilt. Most of the time, Lincoln's emotions and energies are encoded in the opaque language of diplomacy and politics: when he is openly angry, he seems poignantly weak and vulnerable." 


My paraphrase of the selected passage is: 

Bradshaw says that there are two instances where we see the president express anger. The first is when Robert, his son played by Joseph Garden-Levitt) wishes to enlist in the army, despite his parents' disapproval. The other was the time when his wife brings up the topic of their dead son because this unveils the hardships and intense emotions surrounding this topic. For the majority of the film, Lincoln weaves his emotions into his beliefs which seems to strengthen him, but when he displays anger we see his "vulnerable" side.  

On May 1st, 1776, a man named Adam Weishaupt founded the Illuminati to think beyond what religious influence was telling people. The Order was a secret space where members would debate and discuss in a safe space. This was inspired by the Free Maisons which were a group of similar people more focused on religion and finding true meaning. It took a few years for the Order to grow when analyzing Google's ngram. By 1800, the word Illuminati was being used extremely more frequently. It goes down and pops back up in 1840. It is thought that Washington was part of the Illuminati and he died in 1799 which was right as the Illuminati was gaining popularity.

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From 1865 to 1877 the word "negro" was very popular in newspapers. One example from the Memphis paper uses the word very often. They use it as a way to separate African Americans from the rest of society and humanity. They are obviously biased towards white supremacy and the stories are often about crimes African Americans committed and how law enforcers caught and punished them. As expected, they are written to be viewed in a bad light in this time period.

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Reconstruction ended in 1877 because of the compromise of 1877. The Democrats let Hayse become president if he took federal troops out of the south. Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana became democratic states again and the Reconstruction era had ended. Republicans no longer dominated and the fight for equal rights was put to a pause.

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