Sept. 12, 1909 (Sunday)

CONTROVERSY ROILS OVER POLAR EXPLORATION: Today's Globe keeps the dispute right in front of the readers. The Cook-Peary controversy has lasted a while. Some insight comes from key information provided by the Library of Congress.

VERMONT TOWN HAS A HUMAN NEWSPAPER: Meet the leather-lunged Morris Green (right). He lives in Ryegate, Vt., (the picture above shows South Ryegate in 1909) and works at the village story. He has a reputation of being the go-to-guy for information. For him, it's apparently too much to bear to live in a town that's too small to have a newspaper. So, according to today's Globe, "He cries the news from the door of the store, and this weekly instruction is expected by the people and enjoyed by them."
He explains:
"I do it for pure love of humanity, and I want to make the place I live in interesting. To do this I feel that it is part of my duty to interest the people and here, where they are so busy with their toil that they get little time to read and study, I find it delightful to condense news and happenings and to cry it for that benefit."
He adds, "So far as I can learn, I am the only HUMAN NEWSPAPER in the world."
That, of course, isn't quite true. It's a tradition that goes way back. But there's something a little BLOGGISH about it, I think.

AT&T HEAD PEEKS INTO THE FUTURE: Today's Globe has a fascinating interview with telephone industrialist (and president of AT&T) Theodore Newton Vail. He makes predicts that coast-to-coast telephone conversations are coming. The reporter asked: "Will it be possible in the future to talk by telephone from Boston to San Francisco?"
Vail's answer:
"I think so. Our engineer told me the other day that he now believed I should have the privilege of talking from my office in New York, over a straight wire, so some one of our representative in San Francisco... I hope to see the serviced established within two or three years. The wire is already up, and we have sent telegrams over it from ocean to ocean."
One of the follow-up questions dealt with WIRELESS conversations.
It's a concept that Vail had a hard time envisioning it. He drew a circle on a pad of yellow paper for the reporter. He explained, "Here is a pond. You drop a stone into the water on one side and a man on the other side, if his vision is good, counts the little ripples as they come to shore. But if a dozen persons were to drop stones into the pond at the same time and at different places there would be great confusion among the ripples, and no one could count them. However, wireless telephony will have its uses."
I'll say!
He also wondered about video-phones, which has captured the imagination of many for years. He said it would be quite difficult. However, he added: "No man is safe in saying that anything is impossible."