Did Mark twain predict the internet?

In an 1898 short story titled “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904,” Mark Twain introduced an electrical instrument called the telectroscope. Machines for transmitting vision at a distance, telectroscopes had been speculated about since the invention of the telephone in 1876. Over the next quarter of a century, numerous inventors were credited with its imminent, but never realized, production. No such instrument was ever actually built, and it now usually appears only in footnotes to television’s prehistory.

 

 Nevertheless, the telectroscope offers useful insights into the way the Victorian future was constructed out of assemblages of fact and fiction.

...   

 

Thanks to a lot of you guys, Babs had a great month leading up 

to Christmas. She still has a number of items in her store. 

Need a gift idea? Click on the banner or this screen cap:

 

...