Asklemmy

43915 readers

900 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

271

If a person from 1700 asked you your job, would they understand your answer, and if not, how would you explain it to them? (lemm.ee)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

407 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Telegraphs weren't invented yet, they were invented in 1837.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Check it out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph

Optical telegraphs, also called semaphores, were invented in 1684, and first experimented in 1767. The most popular system was invented in 1792. There are a lot of hills around the US and Europe named “Telegraph Hill” because they used to be where an optical telegraph station was set up.

You’re thinking of the electric telegraph, which was indeed invented in 1837, and very quickly supplanted optical telegraphs. We now use the term telegraph almost exclusively to describe the electric telegraph, but someone from the 1700s wouldn’t know that.