Emailing Catalina Island and Ross Perot letting go of his Magna Carta

My Dad sends me cool stories all the time. It is actually very warming. He is the only guy that sends me letters in envelopes stuffed with interesting clips from the newspapers. I use them as reminders to slow down and enjoy some coffee and think about other things from time to time.

In addition to paper envelopes he also sends me emails that have some cool stuff in them too. Below is a quick excerpt on early radio that I thought was in particular cool:

I would go into the 1919 story of the Long Beach Amatuer Radio Club connecting wirelessly to a station on Catalina Island for the purpose of proving that amateur radio could be used as a method of "electronic mail".

The club was ridiculed in the popular press when it was shown that there was no way to prevent anyone from building an identical crystal receiver and reading your mail.

But there was a young David Sarnoff who I believe was working for the Telegraph & Telephone Co. (Bell) that immediately turned the flaw into a new concept. If anyone could eavesdrop what would it be like if everyone could eavesdrop? And with fancy wooden radio cabinents! Radio nets were instantly born. I think CBS official date is 1921 (I can always stand corrected}

From the world of creepy and uncomfortable (at least to me) it turns out that Ross Perot has one of only 2 copies outside of the UK and he is selling it to the highest bidder.

Even weirder is thinking about what idiot of a aristocratic family would sell a 13th century Magna Carta for 1.5m!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/25/nmagna125.xml

This story alone makes really like estate taxes, just because one generation had what it takes to make a fortune I do not see why the next generation should just get a free ride and be idiots with big piles of money and too much influence.

-Erik <div

Originally posted on LiveJournal