Unusual Historicals

By Jeannie Lin

As a Silk Road enthusiast, it's intriguing to track the development of ideas from East to West. In grade school, we were often taught the history of inventions as if they were a single moment of However, the invention of paper and printing techniques is a wonderful opportunity to look at the development of mass media across cultures and periods rather than a single point in time.

The invention of modern papermaking is credited to the eunuch Cai Lun who reported his achievement during the Han Dynasty, circa 125 A.D. However, archaeological evidence has been found that shows paper was in use 200 years earlier in the western regions of China and the Greeks and Egyptian wrote on scrolls and codices made of papyrus as far back as 3000 B.C.

Example of Egyptian papyrus
The availability of a durable and cheap material such as paper or papyrus made it possible to communicate and transmit ideas over long distances as well as record information for future generations. But the act of writing by hand was slow and the knowledge was also limited to only the elite: religious clergy, nobility, and royalty.

First printed newspaper, Mixed News - Tang Dynasty China 712 A.D.
The first printed newspaper, Kaiyun, was started during the Tang Dynasty in 713. In 868, Wang Jie printed a copy of the Diamond Sutra, which is the oldest printed book in existence. By the 11th century, alchemist Bi Sheng, began working with movable type. Printed books replaced scrolls and there's evidence of color printing from China as early as the 14th century.

In the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg's printing press brought about what is commonly lauded as a communications revolution. But what about the Chinese movable type press which had been invented four hundred years earlier? Some historians believe that inventions such as paper, the compass, and the printing press spread from east to west across the trade routes known as the Silk Road whereas other scholars argue that Gutenberg independently discovered movable type.

More interesting than the question of "who did what" is the examination of why the mass media boom happened in Western Europe during the Renaissance/Reformation period rather than Song Dynasty China in the 11th century, even though comparable technology was available.

Though the Chinese press was indeed a major advancement that allowed the empire to print money and distribute information, the language itself, with its thousands of unique characters, wasn't as suited to mass production. The complex characters couldn't be broken down in any systemic way so molding the characters was inefficient. 400 years later, Gutenberg's press was able to make use of the simpler and systematic Latin alphabet to usher in the communications revolution.

By Jennifer Linforth

Newspapers are filled with stories that can be manipulated into all sorts of tales of mystery and intrigue. They are also filled with what so many love best...

...gossip and rumor.

In the 19th century gossip was an art form! It was craved as much back then and it is now. Ladies whispered of it over tea, men debated it over cigars. Lives adhered strictly to etiquette and social standing, so you can well imagine would happen if a tidbit of bad manners or ill morals seeped out to the public. It could ruin a family in a heartbeat! Gossip and rumor truly didn't leak however. Servants were often paid for their loose-lips as were members of society willing to spread untruths to expose their friends. A paper notorious for this was The John Bull, its editor also known to simply make up stories to stir the pot!

Papers reported important political issues and social affairs. By the 19th century journalism's ethics were being established. Papers were a sort of social conscience and many acted in good form. Many others did not and either way a balance was struck between truth and rumor that continues to this day. Scandal sells, and papers of the day quickly understood that, using the aristocracy to pad their pockets. Nothing has changed in this day and age...

Can you imagine a world without gossip rag? Tabloids? People getting their fifteen minutes of fame for whatever the reason? Can you see a world of nothing but facts and full truths? One summer my local news broadcasted nothing but good news once a week. Not gossip, no tragedy, no scandals or politics, just plain old good news.

It didn't last long. Why do you think that is?

By Lorelie Brown

Oh, Christian Bale. He's come a long way, hasn't he, from fresh-faced Jack Kelly in Newsies to the grownup version of himself? Let's take a moment to make a scientific comparison. Yes, that's a good idea. We're all about academic inquiry here at Unusual Historicals.


But did you know that the story of a youth-led strike was based on a true story? The original wasn't nearly cheery enough to have song and dance though, I can promise you that.

In the late 1800s, the newsboys were the lifeblood of the newspaper publishing industry. They were the primary distribution system for almost every newspaper and stood on street corners hawking their wares. Never well received because of their loud screams, they were endured. And they endured as well--crappy as hell living conditions. They were poor. Dirt poor. They usually slept on the streets and often slept right in front of the newspaper offices so they could be the first ones to buy their bundles of papers and get to selling. Thousands upon thousands of them. No coats, no shoes for many of them, and no education.

They weren't allowed to return the bundles of papers they bought. If they didn’t sell them all, they were screwed. Even if they sold every paper they got, their max income was around 30 cents a day.

During the Spanish-American War in 1898, most papers raised the cost for a newsies to buy a bundle to 60 cents. No big deal, because they were moving almost all of them. But then the war ended, and circulation rates returned to normal. But the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer--yeah, that Pulitzer, and New York Morning Journal, owned by William Randolph Hearst, kept their rates the same. Why should they lower the cost? They were making more money and the only ones who paid for it were the newsboys.

In 1899, they’d had enough. The newsies went on strike and refused to sell either the World or the Journal. Rallies were held and gathered more than 5,000 striking newsboys. The most charismatic speaker was Kid Blink, so named because he was blind in one eye, but he was often humiliated in the very papers he was striking against by having his speeches transcribed as a faithful report of his accent and dialect. He was arrested on disorderly conduct charges at least once while leading the strike, but bailed out and continued on.

Though Pulitzer and Hearst never did lower the price of a newspaper bundle back down to 50 cents, they finally did agree to buy back unsold papers. The newsie union disbanded, and as far as I can tell Kid Blink was never heard from again.

By Anna C. Bowling

The picture below isn't the latest cast photo from the upcoming season of Mad Men, but it's close. From the 1960s-80s, my father made his living in the same field as Mad Men's Don Draper and Darren Stevens of Bewitched. Moments of high drama and wacky hijinx are a given in any high pressure workplace and before the days of Photoshop, digital printing, email and PowerPoint, any commercial art had to be done in a far different manner than we know it today.

Having a father who had an endless supply of paper, pencils, markers and the like that couldn't be found in the five and dime was a treasure trove for an artistically inclined child, even though it was made quite clear those were for Dad's work. To this day, a glimpse of a Pantone color chart brings me back to the days I was allowed to visit his office, always a busy place. Sneaking into his studio at home to pilfer the tools of a hard-working commercial artist gave me an up close look at what real life Mad Men (at least those in the art department) did all day. Many of my father's assignments were for newspaper inserts publicizing the latest that department stores such as Caldor's or Barker's (rivals in some circles) or grocery store chains had to offer for a given week.

Since this was before the computer age, the art had to be done by hand, and photographs were taken on film and developed in darkrooms. Layout was another step, cutting and pasting with actual scissors and glue, tape or fixative to make sure everything fit within the allowed space. The layouts could go through several versions, with several layers of tracing paper to try out different colors, image placements or other variables. Typesetting was its own department, which to my pre-elementary school imagination must have been somewhere between a Guttenberg press and a Xerox machine.

Everything came together in large, clanking printing machines that spit out the colorful advertisements on newsprint or glossy paper, ready at last to be picked over with eagle eyes to ensure that everything was spelled correctly, in the right place, and any special elements such as frames or holiday clip art were only on designated pages. My father's personal favorite lucky save in this department was spotting the "It's Mother's Day; Show Her What She Means To You" banner carried over to the wrong section and applied to a manure spreader when it should have stopped at jewelry and small appliances.

Once approved for release, the next step was to get the items where they needed to be, which could be through mail, courier or even personal delivery. Here again, deadlines were all-important and stress levels could rise dramatically if it looked like something wasn't going to make it on time. Since advertising requires a high degree of creativity, our Mad Men usually found a way to make things work, and inserts arrive on our doorsteps and newsstands, snugly buried in our papers at last.

The mechanics of getting a client's concept out to the masses has gone through a computer revolution, but the real life Mad Men (and women) were expert at putting in long, hard hours and nights of work to keep the wheels of commerce turning, juggling family and social life and often their own artistic pursuits as well.

By Zoe Archer

You want to learn the latest news, not just the gossip from your neighborhood, but royal proclamations, the date of the next market day, and government edicts both local and national. But printed material is hard to come by and expensive. Plus, you can't read. So, how do you find out the news?

The town crier.

Having a person announce the news is an ancient custom, but the tradition in Britain is said to have begun some time after the Norman Invasion, when criers would call, "Oyez, oyez, oyez." In old French, this translates to "Hear ye," cries we hear today in the modern justice system. In order to make sure people knew the news was about to be announced, cries would beat small drums, blow horns or ring bells. At the sound, those nearby would gather around to listen.

The criers were men, and sometimes women, who were well respected in the community. They read from a list of notices, including advertising, and then post the notices on the doorway of an inn or tavern so that those who could read might be able to catch up on the latest intelligence.

In Britain, town criers were protected by the monarchy, so that they could not be heckled or prevented from doing their job, and in other countries, criers received similar protection, thus ensuring that the news was distributed.

Our modern newscasters are always well-dressed to present an air of authority. But the practice didn't begin with the advent of the newsreel and television. Town criers made sure to dress elaborately to give themselves the same impression of authority. The traditional outfit of the red and gold caped rope, tricorn hat, white breeches and black boots dates to the 18th century--with some regional variations--and many criers enjoyed the magnificent, elaborate uniform of their profession. Even today, there are competitions around the world where criers vie not only for the honor of being the best at announcing the news, but also for the title of Best Dressed Town Crier.

Though we now have many more sources for news (including this blog), the town crier still exists and reminds of our past, when we'd take a moment to gather around with our friends and neighbors to listen and catch up on the latest happenings.

By Jacquie Rogers

Bat Masterson said he didn't know anybody Wyatt couldn't whip without his guns. A lot of times Wyatt didn't carry guns...because if he carried guns he had to kill somebody--and he would kill somebody--but he didn't want to. He was a very religious man.

When we think of Bat Masterson, most of us envision a lawman, a gunfighter--a man's man in the Old West along side Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock and Doc Holiday. The television series definitely promoted that image. But did you know that he was also a New York sports writer?

Yep. Not only did he end up being a sports writer, but he wrote for years--as a newspaper reporter and editor as well as for other periodicals--and he'd been doing so since he was a young man. In fact, his ability to write and promote himself is how he pretty much created his own legend.

It all started in Quebec, Canada, on November 26, 1853, when a baby boy named Bartholomew Masterson was born Irish parents. In his teens, the family moved to Wichita, Kansas, and he along with his two of his brothers, Ed and James, went off to seek their fortunes as so many other boys did--buffalo hunting. At age 20, he fought in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, and then worked for a while as a U.S. Army scout. From 1876 to 1882, he did his gunfight/lawman gig where he rose to notoriety, but our story starts in 1883.

It seems Bat rather enjoyed the sport of boxing. A lot. He was obsessed with fights and was more than fair at pre-fight analysis as well as calling the winners. So good, in fact, that he wrote a sports column for a Denver newspaper called George's Weekly. Newspapermen (and brothers) A.H. and W.E. Lewis had befriended Bat in Kansas City ten years before, and they would play a prominent role in Bat's fame and later success in the East. With their help, he'd honed his writing skills and while he couldn't be called a literary giant, he was pretty good at the craft.

During the years between his gunfighting days and his newspaper career, he mixed a little law enforcement here and there with gambling and writing. He was a professional gambler (called a thoroughbred) and organized boxing matches, acted as referee at times, as bookie, and guard. He never did actually box himself, though. His predictions were often right on, and he was excellent at assessing the fighters, their physical abilities, talent, and motivation.

Bat's life wasn't all roses. He ended up in more than a few altercations when his past reputation would catch up with him, and after a while, also succumbed to the lure of alcohol, although he threw off the demon when he moved to Manhattan. The buzz of New York City suited him just fine and he loved living there. Who would have thought a crusty old gunfighter would take so quickly to city life?

He hooked up with the Lewis brothers again, and he wrote for the New York Morning Telegraph, where he eventually because vice president and secretary. He was close friends with Teddy Roosevelt and other notables, and lived well for the rest of his days.

In 1921, he was writing his column when he had a heart attack and died hunched over his typewriter. The last thing he wrote was, "There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way."

His last words are evidence that our world really hasn't changed much.

Jacquie

Faery Merry Christmas (a Kindle novella)
Down Home Ever Lovin' Mule Blues (See the Book Video featuring Justin Saragueta)
Jacquie's website * 1st Turning Point * Myspace * Twitter * Facebook
Faery Special Romances * Book Video * Royalties go to Children's Tumor Foundation, ending Neurofibromatosis through Research

By Michelle Styles

The history of the newspaper is really tied into the development of the printing press. Although various proclamations and tablets announcing the news were in use during Roman times, the news sheet did not get its start until cheap printing became available. The first newspapers as such were developed in the 16th century--Requests of the Devonshyre and Cornyshe Rebelles is recognised at the first newspaper. The first titled newspaper--The Courant was published in 1621. However, freedom of the press was something that had to be fought for, rather than a right easily granted.

Knowing the power of the emerging press, Cromwell suppressed all the newspapers in 1649 on the eve of Charles I's execution. And it was not until after the reign of Charles II that newspapers began to be a force again.

Under King William, Berrow's Worchester Journal started in 1690. It is still published today.

It took until the start of Queen Anne's reign in 1702 for a regular daily journal to be published in London--The Daily Courant--but the paper did not have many of the features that we would take for granted today. For example sport only started being reported around 1820.

A number of surviving newspapers started in the early 18th century such as the Belfast News Letter which is the oldest surviving daily newspaper. However, freedom of the press was something that took longer to establish. In 1738 the right to report on parliament was suppressed and in 1763 John Wilkes was prosecuted for seditious libel for openly reporting about parliamentary proceedings. The right to report on parliament was regained in 1771. But the right to a free press was not fully there and when you look at the British newspaper history, you can see why Freedom of the Press was such an important addition to the Constitution of the United States.

The first publisher of The Times, John Walter went to jail in 1083 for publishing things that the king did not like about the Duke of Cumberland as well as foreign news. (The Times is known as The Times, not the London Times or The Times of London because it was the first paper to use the name and it has lent its name to other papers. The font Times New Roman is also named after the paper.) The editor of the Examiner Leigh Hunt went to jail in 1813 for daring to criticise the Prince Regent.

With the Libel Act in 1835, truth is allowed for the first time to be used as a defence in such cases and press freedom in Britain was fairly secure. With such freedom came 'new journalism' in the 1880s which allowed for interviews and gossip columns.

However, even today, journalists do have to fight battles--to protect sources and to have the right investigate stories.

Michelle Styles is an avid reader of newspapers and is particularly grateful that newspapers such as The Times have kept their archives. Her latest UK release is COMPROMISING MISS MILTON. Her latest US release is A NOBLE CAPTIVE.

By Lorelie Brown

Once upon a time, there was a whole genre of fiction decried as trash and pilloried as not worth the time it took to read it.

No, I'm not talking about romance novels.

Penny dreadfuls were published in mid 19th century Britain, and were often called "shilling shockers" and "bloods" and a host of other names. They started around 1830, because Charles Dickens' works were just too expensive for many, at a whole 12 shillings each. Heh. To you and I, the cheap paper and bindings would make them look more like magazines, but to the newly-literate of the day, they were books. Awesome books that they couldn't get enough of.

They carried titles like "Varney the Vampire" and "Wagner the Wehr-Wolf." (I love that second title, personally. I think I'm going to have to read it.) They were cheaply made and cheaply sold, and packs of boys in Britain would either save up together to buy them or trade them around from hand to hand. Supposedly particularly enterprising young men would scrape together the money for a set and rent them out.

I love this idea. Love it, love it, love it, especially in the face of those that complain that pure literature is going downhill and evil, mean publishing is throwing to the wolves those that write enduring classics. Seriously. Publishing has always been about giving readers what they want and if "classics" happen to shake out from it, so much the better. But we won't really know what gets classified as a classic until our great-great-grandchildren are in their college level English classes.

Eh, I'm good with that.

For now, I'd much rather poke around what was considered trash more than a hundred years ago.

In the United States, Penny Dreadfuls were known as "dime novels," because they usually cost a dime. (Duh. Heh.) But despite that name, there were tons of different series and costs and printings. Different sizes, both in terms of pages and dimensions, abounded as well. Publishers would come out with new covers, and re-release old best sellers. (Sound familiar?)

The only thing that killed the penny dreadfuls and dime novels were even cheaper, trashier stories. In about 1893, a guy named Alfred Harmsworth started publishing story papers for only a half-penny each. Sweet.

Buffalo Bill featured heavily in many of the later dime novels. There were others with highwaymen, gothics and stories about famous killers. Spring Heeled Jack, a psychotic killed who haunted London. A Stringful of Pearls: A Romance was the original title of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Butcher. Fun times. No, seriously, I think they do sound like fun. Stanford University has a collection of 8,000 dime novels, some of which they've converted to be read online. Look, they've got Jesse James, the Outlaw! There goes the rest of my afternoon.

By Delia DeLeest

Nowadays radio seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. It's used to maybe catch a few minutes of the news on your way to work. Otherwise, if you want entertainment, you'll take out your iPod or get on the internet. But less than a hundred years ago, radio brought the world to places that previously only got their news and information from the newspapers, sometimes days after it actually happened. Radio was the first modern mass media and it changed the world.

The year 1923 seems to be the turning point from radio being a specialized tool to becoming accessible to the masses. Sears & Roebuck offered radios for sale for the first time in their spring catalog and 556 stations dotted the country in such diverse places as Paducah, Kentucky and New Lebanon, Ohio. Over 400,000 homes had a radio by the end of that year, up from only 60,000 the year before. In the beginning people were so excited to hear voices coming from that big wooden box in their living room that they would listen to anything. Here's an example of a common broadcasting lineup in 1923:

5:15 Rinaldo Sidoli, violinist
5:30 Rea Stelle, contralto
6:00 Peter's Adventures, by Florence Vincent
7:30 Frederick Taggart, baritone
8:15 Lecture by W. F. Hickernell
8:30 Viola K. Miller, soprano
8:45 Salvation Army Band concert
9:15 Viola K. Miller, soprano

As the 1920s rolled on, politicians discovered that radio was a wonderful way to get their campaign promises out to the general public. A New York Times reporter summed it up this way: "brief pithy statements as to the positions of the parties and candidates which reach the emotions through the minds of millions of radio listeners, will play an important part in the race to the White House." That would be 1928's version of the political soundbite so commonly used today.

By the time the Depression rolled around, Americans were so enamored of their radios that they became a family's most prized possession. Social workers found that many people were more apt to sell their furniture and clothing to make rent payments rather than part with the wooden box that kept them connected to the outside world. Radio had gone from being mere entertainment to a lifeline. It not only brought local and national news into their home, but the new radio shows coming out brought laughter into their lives in the form of Amos 'n Andy and Jack Benny. Radio shows like these became staples in America's homes and the Golden Age of Radio had begun.

By Sandra Schwab

Back in the olden days when Good Queen Bess ruled over England, making the news usually involved some kind of gruesome execution and the display of various rotting body parts on crossways up and down the country. If you were very notorious indeed, your story could also be worth an entry into a town chronicle or it was transformed into a broadside ballad. Add a pretty woodcut, and it could be sold on the streets for cheap money; a practice which remained popular until well into the nineteenth century, when the story of the murder of a Maria Marten by her gentleman suitor in 1827 sold more than one million copies.

In the case of Thomas Arden, the story of his death and the bringing to justice of his murderers even entered the Renaissance stage as "The Tragedie of Arden of Faversham" (1592). Arden was a power-hungry landowner, who at forty married a girl of sixteen. He seems to have been a domineering, profit-seeking man, and there was no much love lost between the married couple.

The wife, Alice, eventually took a lover, with whom she started plotting the death of her husband. The events that followed were first described in a chronicle of 1551:

This year on S. Valentine's day at Faversham in Kent was committed a shameful murder, for one Arden a gentleman was by the consent of his wife murdered, wherefore she was burned at Canterbury, and there was hanged in chains for that murder and at Faversham (two) hanged in chains, and a woman burned, and in Smithfield was hanged one Mosby [i.e., Alice's lover] and his sister for the murder also.

The title page of the play shows how a later generation transformed the events at Faversham into a moral lesson on the wickedness of women and the dangers of base lust: "Wherin is shewed the great malice and discimulation of a wicked woman, the unsatiable desire of filthy lust and the shamefull end of all murderers."

By Carrie Lofty

Before television, the nightly news, and goofy local weather forecasters, people only had one source of news that featured moving pictures: the newsreel. Generally brief and themed to a particular topic, newsreels were documentary films that covered world events, topical and local concerns, and entertainment gossip.

Invented in 1908 by the innovative production company Pathé Frères in 1908, newsreels premiered in Britain in 1909 as the Daily Bioscope. The concept of garnering news from movie pictures soon caught on, particularly in America and the British Commonwealth nations. Much like movie previews today, the newsreels preceded a feature film, or else were sandwiched between two features as part of the intermission. In the 1930s and 40s, newsreels were so essential that many large cities had dedicated newsreel movie houses, and even smaller movie houses had dedicated theaters that showed the latest newsreels on a continuous loop all day.

During the silent movie era, newsreels were accompanied by on-site piano music and narrative placards. Here's an example:


Later newsreels were fully narrated, such as this one from Castle Films about the bombing of Pearl Harbor:


During the Great Depression and WWII, Hollywood and the Allied governments employed the best writers of that generation to make the news more palatable and patriotic. For example, both Dylan Thomas and John Steinbeck wrote newsreel scripts.

No matter their importance to people of the early 20th century, newsreels did not survive the swift transition from radio to TV. Television brought newsreels right into living rooms, thus ending the need to leave home for one's current events. But for historians who study that era, newsreels continue to provide fantastic information about long-forgotten news events and, more importantly, the cultural attitudes that shaped its reporting.

By Isabel Roman

You shouldn't believe everything your read. Predatory pricing, outrageous propaganda, and questionable advertising--no, I don't refer to Walmart, Target, or Amazon, but to the practices of William Randolph Hearst. He was one of the original national snake oil salesmen.

In 1896, Hearst and his New York Morning Journal later New York Journal--American went head to head with the more popular New York World newspaper. He under-priced them by selling his paper at a mere 1¢ and began a systematic alternation of the paper's news practices designed to trounce the New York World.

Upton Sinclair, in his 1919 The Brass Check, accused Hearst's "Universal News Bureau" of re-writing the news of the London morning papers in the Hearst office in New York and then fraudulently sending it out to American afternoon newspapers under the by-lines of imaginary names of non-existent "Hearst correspondents" in London, Paris, Venice, Rome, Berlin, and so on.

He made up stories from nothing and often exaggerated the story around simple incidences. He could sensationalize a young boy scraping his knee into a horrific accident where all four limbs were lost. Remember the Maine? Hearst made sure every American did, hence the Spanish-American War.

His were not the first predatory business practices in the U.S. but they were the most defining in American media.

Today, I could name the tabloids of The Star, The Worldwide News, The National Enquire, and The Sun, but these days the more established media such as The New York Times seem to be following suit. Yellow Journalism, unfortunately, seems to be with us still today.