Word: telegraphist
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Edison's life does entail some inherently interesting history--young Tom growing up in the Midwest during the Civil War, selling newspapers and printing one of his own; Edison the insomniac telegraphist; Edison the eccentric inventor; Edison the occasional businessman. But Clark's book is only interesting to the extent that Edison's life was interesting. Thoughtful analysis is largely left behind after the first half dozen pages, and the book becomes a string of information bits, arranged loosely in chronological order. The only logic connecting the information presented is the immediately obvious: what happened when. Clark rarely steps back...
...months of war, oil lamps had been supplanted by the light bulb, the gourd by the bidet, pineapple juice by Coca Cola, lotto by roulette, Rocambole by Pearl White, the messenger boy's donkey by the telegraphist's bicycle...
...contrast, the dispatcher continues his express schedule of seductions, this time with the railroad telegraphist. During one encounter he playfully imprints her rear with a German occupation stamp-an indelible gesture that scandalizes her mother, who promptly trots daughter all over town, showing the handiwork to anyone who will look. Eventually, the crestfallen dispatcher is brought before a rubber-stamp congress of officialdom to account for his shocking behavior. Brandishing photographic evidence of the misdeed, a Nazi bureaucrat asks: "Miss Svata, is this your behind?", and prates about the "defamation of the German state language...
...several army girls in uniform, wearing boots, dark-blue skirts and the army blouse. They were as far forward as advanced divisional headquarters. . . . One was a medical, one was a telegraphist, another was a motor driver, another was a clerk with an air force unit...
Only two of the sunken crew escaped, her commander, Lieutenant R. J. Gardner, and Telegraphist Sydney Cleburne, who happened to be in the conning tower. Three men were lost from the L-12, which was sucked down 40 feet after the collision but bobbed up again and made port without assistance...