π πΏπππππππππ π°ππππππ Roundup
Airmail, Electric Cooking and Novel Induced Child Labor Strikes
βοΈ Airmail
The first official airmail delivery was made in 1911, today we take such a service for granted, but in the first decade of the 1900s it was as strange and unfamiliar as reusable rockets are today. A year prior βThe Engineering Magazineβ doubted the commercial viability of these new fangled flying machines.
π Dickensian Move
In 1900 child workers in a factory went on strike demanding a small pay raise. Officials naturally blamed novel reading, rather than their exploitation of the children, for the strikes. At the time novel reading was seen as a corroding influence on children, this was clearly an extension of that attitude.
π OnlyFans 1.0
The rise of OnlyFans is being treated by some as a digital era perversion, eroding our morals and corrupting women, but even in the earliest days of photography analog OnlyFans type businesses emerged.
164 years ago an article titled βAbuse of Photographyβ reported on a Paris police bust, noting that jail time was required as fines would be too easily covered by revenue from selling the risquΓ© photographs. The bust βwent viralβ appearing in papers across the world.
π Book Time
Weβve shared many cries against the over reading of book but this example comes from an unexpected source: a former President of John Hopkins University. He called it βA dangerous habit like a stimulant.β
π Fun Find
A great find was flagged to our attention on Twitter this week: concerns about the glare of white paper (akin to concerns about screens today.) Another tidbit pointed to an early concept of βnight modeβ in the 1870s: "books should be printed in white ink on black paper." We found something along these lines at the start of the year that extended to white ceilings and clothes.
π₯ Fire or GTFO
Once upon a time cooking with electricity was seen as silly and faddish, a newspaper summed up the attitude with this quote from a fictional housewife:
βElectricity may be all right for the telephone, the telegraph and the street car, butβwell, really, I wouldnβt trust it with one of my cakes in the oven.β
According to the article it seems attitudes began to change in 1921 when which it seemed housewives were coming around to the idea.
