History of Technology
The Privacy Panic Cycle: From Kodak Fiends to Camera Glasses
The 1888 Kodak No. 1 made photography possible of anyone, anywhere, without consent — producing 'Kodak fiends', beach and monument bans, and alarmed press that faded by about 1910. It also produced Warren and Brandeis's 1890 'The Right to Privacy', the foundation of American privacy law. Two rebuttals to using the cycle dismissively: indifference is not consent, and automated identification is genuinely new where every previous panic concerned capture alone.
Google Glass and the Glasshole Backlash
Sold to developers from 2013 at $1,500, Glass was visibly a camera on the face that gave bystanders no way to know whether it was recording. 'Glasshole' entered the language, venues banned it, and consumer sales ended in January 2015 — though the enterprise edition ran until 2023. The usual lesson drawn is wrong: what the market rejected was looking like you were wearing one, and that visibility was also the bystander's notice.
Samuel Morse vs Alfred Vail: Telegraph Credit Dispute
Historical debate over how much credit for the American telegraph and Morse code belongs to Alfred Vail versus his more famous business partner Samuel Morse, with primary-source evidence on both sides.
Cooke and Wheatstone Telegraph (1837)
The first commercially successful electric telegraph, deployed in London in 1837 by William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, used five wires and five pivoting needles to point at letters on a diamond-shaped grid.