Yesterday and today I wound up learning about a few different interesting facets of early telecommunications history, Civil Rights #history, and more.
First: I came across telegraphy inventor Guglielmo Marconi's testimony to the US Senate in 1912 about telegraph equipment and procedures involved in the aftermath of the Titanic's sinking.
https://www.metafilter.com/209967/The-Titanic-was-equipped-by-my-company
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Thursday, April 25, 1912:
Mr. MARCONI.
The actual signs of the messages were received immediately.
Senator SMITH.
How much later?
Mr. MARCONI.
Theoretically, it should take, for 6,000 miles, one-twentieth or one twenty-fifth of a second. I did not measure it, but it did seem instantaneous.
Senator SMITH.
That is, it was received within a minute?
Mr. MARCONI.
Yes; under a minute; one-twentieth of a second. It traveled with the same speed as light, I should say.....
(Context: This particular exchange concerns a successful experiment in which Marconi, in Argentina, received a message from Ireland. Also includes:
...It was not a reliable connection.
Senator SMITH.
When you got nothing did you think that the messages had been intercepted?
Mr. MARCONI.
No; I did not.
Senator SMITH.
At sea or other shore stations?
Mr. MARCONI.
They had been absorbed in the atmosphere. Another station can not intercept them so as to stop them; they can only get a copy.)
A friend noticed that one of the Senators questioning Marconi was Duncan U. Fletcher, and pointed me to his English Wikipedia bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_U._Fletcher .
Which noted that he was "a staunch supporter of the Confederate cause" in the 20th century -- but also that, in the 1890s, was one of three attorneys, all white, appointed to administer the bar examination to James Weldon Johnson, who was the first African-American admitted to the Florida Bar by examination. Huh.
When I came across that claim, it had no citation, and I was pretty doubtful. I used WikiBlame https://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php?user_lang=en&lang=en&project=wikipedia&tld=org&article=Duncan+U.+Fletcher&needle=weldon&skipversions=0&ignorefirst=0&limit=500&offmon=8&offtag=15&offjahr=2025&searchmethod=int&order=desc&user= and saw that a user had added this in 2007 along with many other no-citation claims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Duncan_U._Fletcher&diff=prev&oldid=153511909
So I started learning more about Fletcher and about Johnson, and editing the articles about them as I went.
Thanks to New York Public Library patron research database access, The Wikipedia Library https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/about/ which "allows active editors to access a wide range of collections of paywalled reliable sources for free", and the Internet Archive's ebook program, I followed a citation trail, from scholarly reviews of a Fletcher biography, to the biography itself, to Johnson's autobiography.
And I confirmed: it was true! And I edited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Weldon_Johnson#Education_and_law_careers and Fletcher's bio accordingly.
I left some pointers to sources on the Fletcher talk page so some future editor can improve that page.
And I started reading more of James Weldon Johnson's autobiography, because it's funny, & because he was amazing. This guy:
passed the Bar in a grueling and unfair 2-hour exam in front of a crowded courtroom of spectators
was the first black executive secretary of the NAACP
wrote the poem that became the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
served as a diplomat in Venezuela
Example of the wry humor in "Along this way" (1933) (starting ~p. 140):
> In some way D — came to the attention of Mr. Stockton and was engaged by him to campaign for the Straightout ticket....
> D— came to me and said, "Mr. Stockton wants to carry out the promise he made to do something for me...." Mr. Stockton did carry out his pre-election promise, despite the fact that he had been defeated— which, perhaps, was evidence that he had no real aptitude for practical politics— ....
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