Here's A Tweet To End All Tweets: U R Alembic!

This blogger doesn't Tweet or text. Instead, he writes old-fashioned HTML-code for this blog. Get a life, blogger! If this is (fair & balanced) quasi-Luddism, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Twittergraphy
By Ben Schott

The 140-character limit of Twitter posts was guided by the 160-character limit established by the developers of SMS. However, there is nothing new about new technology imposing restrictions on articulation. During the late 19th-century telegraphy boom, some carriers charged extra for words longer than 15 characters and for messages longer than 10 words. Thus, the cheapest telegram was often limited to 150 characters†.

Concerns for economy, as well as a desire for secrecy, fueled a boom in telegraphic code books that reduced both common and complex phrases into single words. Dozens of different codes were published; many catered to specific occupations and all promised efficiency.

The phrases below are from the third edition of “The Anglo-American Telegraphic Code,” published in 1891. It can only be hoped that, as Twitter advances, more people will begin Tweeting in code, thus:

Click on image to enlarge. Ω

[Ben Schott, the author of Schott’s Miscellany 2009, is a contributing columnist for The Times. Schott was born in London and graduated from Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he read Social and Political Sciences with a Double First. At Cambridge he was a regular photographer for the university student newspaper Varsity. He writes "Schott’s Vocab" at this link.

Copyright © 2009 The New York Times Company

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Copyright © 2009 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves