Mark Twain

I really like Mark Twain, and he's mentioned on this forum
from time to time. Most of what I know of him is from Wiki.
I ran across an article recently in a 1950's magazine that
had some facts I'd never heard before.

We think of Twain as a down to earth guy, worked on river
boats and such. But he was really an intellectual snob. He
married into a wealthy family in 1869 and they built a huge
19 room brick mansion in Hartford CT. Twain thought he
was a brilliant businessman and he was actually atrocious
at it.

He turned down Alexander Bell and the telephone because
he couldn't figure a practical use for the phone, other
than a novelty. Instead he invested the equivelent of 8
million in todays dollars in a scam. They bled him dry over
an automatic typesetting machine. He blew his fortune and
his wifes inheritance on it. It bancrupted him. This is all
common knowledge.

The article had some things I'd never heard before. Twain
was fond of constantly speculating to people what he'd do
when he was rich. He wanted his own railroad and private
cars for his family, like the Robber Baron tycoons had. He
had all kinds of grandiose plans for the big shot he was
going to be. Thats all glossed over now, he's been gone a
long time and its not befitting a national folk hero that he
was really a snob who only wanted great wealth so he
could look down his nose at everybody else.

The first pic is the Hartford house and the second is the
house they owned for use in the summer. Nice life if you
can afford it.

I'm not sure 'scam' is quite correct and would prefer there be emphasis on the change in technology also playing a role. The Mergenthaler Linotype did make people fortunes and changed the newspaper business.

He was unwise in business... once having been one of three men who jointly owned a claim to what later became known as the Comstock Lode. He would have been rich beyond all dreams but each of the three men who owned the claim thought that the others would take care of the necessary proving work within the mandatory ten days. Mark Twain returned to town just a few hours after the time ran out and he claim was re-sold at auction according to the Mining Law then in effect. Only a few hours with a pick and shovel would have sufficed as "proving work" but none of the three owners bothered to do it.

Quote: FleaStiff

I'm not sure 'scam' is quite correct

Thats Twain's own word for, not mine. He said towards
the end it was obvious it was a scam to get all his money.
They constantly invented problems until he was broke.

Jond Rockefeller was like Twain in that he wanted to
be fabulusly wealthy too. But he had the ability to
look into the future and see value in a product. He
madehis fortune on kerosene. He was retired before
gas powered cars caught on, selling gas was almost
an afterthought.

I have never gotten over that Twain could see no
use for the telephone. He thought you would call
the doctor for an appointment, and call the market
for a delivery, and that was it. It would be a fad that
would die out. But he was a huge supporter of
newspapers, he even owned part of one. Why couldn't
he see the phone was about communication, just like a
newspaper is. People can't get enough of talking to
each other.

Quote: EvenBob

I have never gotten over that Twain could see no
use for the telephone. He thought you would call
the doctor for an appointment, and call the market
for a delivery, and that was it. It would be a fad that
would die out. But he was a huge supporter of
newspapers, he even owned part of one. Why couldn't
he see the phone was about communication, just like a
newspaper is. People can't get enough of talking to
each other.

Lets be fair on the telephone thing. While thought to be the most valuable patent ever issued, think of things at the time. First, if you are first on your block, who would you call? Like the joke about the guy who bought one of the first fax machines in the 1980s and couldn't wait until another one was sold so he could use it. Then think of the cost and the times. Average person doesn't go much off their block. So if they need someone they just walk there. Calling longer distances was very expensive, who would have the money for it. Does anyone else here remember waiting until after 10:00 to make a LD call? Or calling the operator for credit if you dialed wrong? Or calling after a trip and letting it ring twice then hanging up to let your family know you got there safe and sound? Multiply this by many factors at the phone's invention.

The last sentence is the biggie. Telephones in the early 1900s to CB Radios in the 70s to internet in the 90s. People like to jump on the latest way to reach out.

Quote: AZDuffman

Lets be fair on the telephone thing. While thought to be the most valuable patent ever issued, think of things at the time. First, if you are first on your block, who would you call? Like the joke about the guy who bought one of the first fax machines in the 1980s and couldn't wait until another one was sold so he could use it. Then think of the cost and the times. Average person doesn't go much off their block. So if they need someone they just walk there. Calling longer distances was very expensive, who would have the money for it. Does anyone else here remember waiting until after 10:00 to make a LD call? Or calling the operator for credit if you dialed wrong? Or calling after a trip and letting it ring twice then hanging up to let your family know you got there safe and sound? Multiply this by many factors at the phone's invention.

Does anybody else remember the Video Phone? My Dad (who likes weird technology) almost bought the $500 contraption that took a picture every 15 seconds for us so my Grandma, who lived an hour away, could see us when she called. Then we'd have to buy her one, teach her how to use it (which was kind of like teaching a cat to do quantum physics) and pay the extra usage fees.

Now nearly everybody gets a front-facing camera where you can Skype with your buddies wherever you are, without paying an extraordinary fee. Even as a kid, I remember thinking the videophone would die out, but alas, it changed with technology and 20 years later fantasy is reality.

I once saw an original play by Mark Twain called, "Is He Dead?". It was cute, if you like Limburger cheese jokes and drag.

Quote: s2dbaker

I once saw an original play by Mark Twain called, "Is He Dead?". It was cute, if you like Limburger cheese jokes and drag.

It was probably hilarous when it was written. There
are lots of comic movies from the 30's that aren't
funny at all now. Tastes change, thank god.

On the phone thing, it was just in the early 90's
that I waited till after 5 to make any long distance
call, it was half as much. Then in 96 I got a cell
phone and got rid of the land line forever. I still
can't get over that I can call my sister in PA for
the same charge as the guy next door. It feels
like cheating somehow.

Back in the 1960s my uncle was a supervisor with Ma Bell so he didn't pay for his phone. We lived in a different county and calling him would be long distance so he worked out a code with my mother to let the phone ring twice and then hang up and he'd call her back. He had these ring-so-many-times-and-hang-up codes with a few other people too.

I think everyone did that ring-once-and-hang-up thing to let someone know they got home okay. I still do it once in a while.

When my father was a kid in the 1920s and 30s there was one rich family that had a phone and they would take calls for everyone else on the block and then relay the messages, which were usually about bad news or emergencies or about someone dying. For the rest of his life, if anyone ever called my father he never answered the phone with "hello" he would say, "what's wrong?"

Does anyone remember that you had to rent your phone from the telephone company? It wasn't until after the AT&T divestiture in 1978 that you were allowed to own your own phone. My mother kept renting her phone until about 1992, when I finally convinced her to buy one.

The phone company also used to charge extra if you had more than one phone. My cousin, who was an installer, once ran an extension line for us and if we ever had to have a telephone repairman -- or even someone who we didn't know very well -- come into the house we had to disconnect the second phone and hide it so it couldn't be reported.

Quote: Tiltpoul

Does anybody else remember the Video Phone?

No. But up until the 1990s there was "video-conferencing." Basically you rented a TV studio with a conference table and another company did the same some thousands of miles away, and you could hold conferences in real time. It was expensive, but cheaper than sending out teams on two or three day trips for the same purpose.

I'm still waiting for the teleporter and the time machine, though :)

Quote: tsmith

Does anyone remember that you had to rent your phone from the telephone company?

When we moved to the country in the 50's we had a party
line with 8 different people on it. Everybody had their
own ring. 3 shorts, 2 shorts, a long short long, etc. You
could almost never get a free line, somebody was always
talking. Of course us kids hobby was to listen in on calls,
it was very exciting. Listening to adult women talk aboout
wash day and bread baking day was fun, I guess.

It gradually went to 6 people and 4 and we got a private
line in the mid 60's. And you're right, we hooked up our
own extension and had to hide it when the phone co came
or get charged.

I remember seeing a video phone at the 1964 World's Fair, and they predicted that by 1999 every home would have one, along with a flying car. That was some super-duper space-age stuff, boy, and we all oohed and aahed over it.

Honestly, I'm glad he passed up the business ventures. The world has more than enough businessmen and far too few good writers with a sense of humor. I'll go to look up a quote in Bartlett's and find myself just browsing through the Twain pages long after I've found what I was searching for.

I never really care if my cultural heroes have feet of clay. I like them for their output, not who they really were. I gave up reading the music press when younger, as I didn't care what the bands had to say for themselves, but what they produced music wise.

Same with authors. What they do outside their written and published words does not concern me. It might if I decided to studied them as part of an English Literature class, but otherwise, it's what they've written that counts to me.

Mark Twain is the great American Novelist. I love reading his stuff, his sense of humour and artistry in description. I've read Life on the Mississippi about a half dozen times now.

I'd love to see Michael Palin recreate his "Americans Abroad" route as well (though I know it'd be better with a American travel journalist, I've a huge soft spot for Palin's various travelogues he did in the 90's).

Quote: FarFromVegas

Honestly, I'm glad he passed up the business ventures. The world has more than enough businessmen and far too few good writers with a sense of humor. I'll go to look up a quote in Bartlett's and find myself just browsing through the Twain pages long after I've found what I was searching for.

You may want to check out an alternate history novel called "How Few Remain" by Harry Turtledove. It posits that the Confederacy won the Civil War. It's set a few years later, when there's a war between the USA and the CSA, over the CSA's purchase of two Mexican states from Emperor Maximilian (!)

I bring it up because one of the p.o.v. characters is Mark Twain, who at the time is a newspaper editor in San Francisco. Other such characters include Frederick Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln and Generals Stonewall Jackson and George Custer. (Yes, I do know some of them ought to have been dead at the time; that's one part of why it is alternate history).

Contrary to most of Turtledove's work, it's not a rehash of actual history with the players and locales changed.

Quote: Nareed

You may want to check out an alternate history novel called "How Few Remain" by Harry Turtledove. It posits that the Confederacy won the Civil War. It's set a few years later, when there's a war between the USA and the CSA, over the CSA's purchase of two Mexican states from Emperor Maximilian (!)

I bring it up because one of the p.o.v. characters is Mark Twain, who at the time is a newspaper editor in San Francisco. Other such characters include Frederick Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln and Generals Stonewall Jackson and George Custer. (Yes, I do know some of them ought to have been dead at the time; that's one part of why it is alternate history).

Contrary to most of Turtledove's work, it's not a rehash of actual history with the players and locales changed.

Was Abe hunting vampires then? :D

Quote: FarFromVegas

Was Abe hunting vampires then? :D

He wasn't even hunting Confederates by then ;)

Quote: EvenBob

we hooked up our own extension and had to hide it when the phone co came or get charged.

Most lines were checked remotely for excessive voltage drop indicating the existence of another extension with a ringer.

Quote: thecesspit

Same with authors. What they do outside their written and published words does not concern me.

But it does concern many people. Hemingway was bigger
than life not for his writings but because of his lifestyle.
Same with Sinatra in music. Its different now. People
are much more secretive, they don't like living in the
public eye. Hemingway couldn't help it, they sought him
out. He was actually quite shy with strangers, but could
be a real jerk if he knew you.

Quote: EvenBob

But it does concern many people. Hemingway was bigger
than life not for his writings but because of his lifestyle.
Same with Sinatra in music. Its different now. People
are much more secretive, they don't like living in the
public eye. Hemingway couldn't help it, they sought him
out. He was actually quite shy with strangers, but could
be a real jerk if he knew you.

Oh, I agree, there's plenty of folks who want the context and the knowledge of the cultural icons, the rich and the famous (and there's still plenty of people happily willing to spread their lifestyles all over the media).

Just personally, I don't care.

Quote: tsmith

Does anyone remember that you had to rent your phone from the telephone company? It wasn't until after the AT&T divestiture in 1978 that you were allowed to own your own phone. My mother kept renting her phone until about 1992, when I finally convinced her to buy one.

My parents rented one until the phone company gave it to them, said they no longer rented them.

Quote:

The phone company also used to charge extra if you had more than one phone. My cousin, who was an installer, once ran an extension line for us and if we ever had to have a telephone repairman -- or even someone who we didn't know very well -- come into the house we had to disconnect the second phone and hide it so it couldn't be reported.

We had an "illegal" sedcond one in the cellar, my grandfather was an electrician and somehow knew how to "jump it in." For years we could dial our own number, hang up, and when the other person picked it up then pick up again and use it as an intercom of sorts. This feature died when the number was changed.

This seemed a near requirement for the neighborhood, along with an illegal HBO hookup and taking the "pollution junk" off of your car.