DoubleQuoting ReTweets

[ by Charles Cameron — of tweets, and telephones, and terminal points with teletype equipment ]

.

The White House RTs Rouhani, Rouhani RTs State.

Is this a “sign of the times”?

Was any bookmaker offering odds on this happening?

**

Would I have been excited enough to want to write it up if I’d just found out, fifty years ago, that the White House had a “red telephone” that connected directly to the Kremlin?

I doubt it — but this article from the Smithsonian, There Never Was Such a Thing as a Red Phone in the White House informs us that it wasn’t a question of telephones either — it was…

two terminal points with teletype equipment, a full-time duplex wire telegraph circuit and a full-time radiotelegraph circuit.

Now — why am I feeling just a tad saddened by that tidbit of lifelong learning?