Who invented the telegram...?
 

I hope she was joking...

[B]"In 1857, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telegram -- a woman would have done it first but she was stuck in the kitchen," Timpf joked. But the goals of the program are serious, she noted.[B]


WIKI GENDER BIAS? Colleges Offering Credit to Inject Feminism Into Site
Sep 06, 2013 6:39 PM EDT


Fifteen universities including some Ivy League schools are offering college credit to students who will inject feminist thinking into the popular website Wikipedia -- something critics are calling an eye-opening case of campus bias.

"Usually it's a little more subtle than a course actually to inject liberal bias in what is supposed to be factual articles! It's absurd," Katherine Timpf, a reporter with CampusReform.org, told Fox News.

The program is called "Storming Wikipedia," and was set up by a group called FemTechNet as part of its Dialogues on Feminism and Technology online course, according to CampusReform.org. Approximately 300 students are currently registered for the course, and schools like Yale University, Brown University and Pennsylvania State University are participating.

Anne Balsamo, dean of the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York, says the program is meant to revise a bias seen on the massive online encyclopedia, where many pages are "skewed now toward male participation."

"Today in the English version of Wikipedia, if you type feminism and technology it says 'no page exists'," Balsamo, who is affiliated with the program, told Women's eNews. The objective, she said, is to leave Wikipedia in better condition than "when we started the project," as a "cross-cultural digital archive."

How the feminist thinking they were seeking would appear was anyone's guess.

[B]"In 1857, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telegram -- a woman would have done it first but she was stuck in the kitchen," Timpf joked. But the goals of the program are serious, she noted.[B]

"They're more concerned with making it politically correct than factually correct," she told Fox News. "This is the opposite of what [students] should be taught."

According to a press release at FemTechNet's website, participating institutions include: Bowling Green State University, Brown University, California Polytechnic State University, Colby-Sawyer College, The CUNY Graduate Center, Macaulay Honors College and Lehman College (CUNY), The New School, Ohio State University, Ontario College of Art and Design University, Pennsylvania State University, Pitzer College, Rutgers University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Yale University.

"...she told Fox News."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Surely this is an Onion article. A telegram is a message sent by a telegraph. The telegraph was invented by Samuel P. Morse, as in Morse Code. Alexander Graham Bell invented the tele PHONE. I'm not sure what year, but it was far later than 1857.

Blazing Saddles?

Hey, it's the Fox, why let facts get in the way? Seriously, if the spokesperson for CampusReform actually stated that Bell invented the telegram, it is pretty sad...

Vin

Jeptha Wade
Samuel Morse
Hiram Sibley
Ezra Cornell
Founded Western Union......

first message in the US sent by telegraph was 1844.

Sadly, a brief web search shows these people are real and apparently serious. They also appear so clueless that they truly can't tell the difference between a telegram and telegraph and a telephone. They don't have enough of a sense of history to realize that one was invented before the Civil War, (maybe it takes a boy to know about the Pony Express and how the telegraph killed it) and the other came much later than the Civil War. Maybe they think Lincoln phoned in his orders to General Grant when he was on the front. Did Sam Morse tap out "come here Watson, I need you" when he invented his famous six gun?

I could say something snarky about how the article could have been written by a woman, except that it was.

Can the wikipedia people press charges against them for vandalizing their websites, or technoterrorism, or something?

My first thought...

The telegram? Thats like asking 'who invented the letter?' or 'who invented the message?'. Its a product of a device. It can't be directly invented. Stupid fool.

Another example of college professors having way too much time on their hands. If there were actually busy like people with real jobs, they wouldn't have time to screw with things that are useful (unlike themselves who apparently serve no purpose).