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