Local newspapers are all about local news nowadays, but that wasn’t always the case. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the local newspaper was often where one got all their news of the world. There were news cooperatives that local papers could subscribe to, including the Associated Press, which goes all the way back to 1846. Newspapers often traded subscriptions with each other so that stories told in one town could be retold in another, usually with attribution.
This came to mind when I ran across the March 4, 1914 edition of the Salmon Recorder. Page three was devoted to national news without a single word about Salmon. The story that caught my eye had been written upon the occasion of the ten-year anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight. It pointed out that Wilbur Wright flew his plane for 59 seconds that day at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In just ten years the record for sustained flight was up to 14 hours and 1,300 miles.
There were some predictions about what the future of “aeroplanes” would bring. An accompanying illustration, below, showed towering terminals in a city a little larger than Salmon could dream of becoming. There were about 1400 residents in 1914. Aeroplane users of the future were expected to take an elevator into the sky where they could catch an “uptown” or “downtown” plane to the destination of their choice.
Note to editors: If you stick your neck out and predict the future in print, the future will always come back to bite you.
This came to mind when I ran across the March 4, 1914 edition of the Salmon Recorder. Page three was devoted to national news without a single word about Salmon. The story that caught my eye had been written upon the occasion of the ten-year anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight. It pointed out that Wilbur Wright flew his plane for 59 seconds that day at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In just ten years the record for sustained flight was up to 14 hours and 1,300 miles.
There were some predictions about what the future of “aeroplanes” would bring. An accompanying illustration, below, showed towering terminals in a city a little larger than Salmon could dream of becoming. There were about 1400 residents in 1914. Aeroplane users of the future were expected to take an elevator into the sky where they could catch an “uptown” or “downtown” plane to the destination of their choice.
Note to editors: If you stick your neck out and predict the future in print, the future will always come back to bite you.
RSS Feed