Post Office, the
28 November 2007
It is common knowledge that
Benjamin Franklin invented the post office when he
one day spilled acid on his lap and ordered a comforting poultice
for delivery from his assistant in the next room. Watson
promptly mailed the item but Franklin was unable
to sign for delivery since his torso was, at the moment, on
fire.
Franklin was able to look back on the event with his usual good humor, noting in his famous brass and ivory diary: "My lappe is now most singed and indeed it would not surprise me to know that my most intimate friends should call me 'Old Singed Lappe.'"
Many of Franklin's friends did; though some misunderstood "singed" to be the past tense of "sing" and took to calling him "Old Sung Lap" instead, thinking the verb more correct. (See also: Sunglap Family of Boston).
In its earliest carnation, the Post Office was more than just a place to send or receive lap poultices. It was a meeting spot, a place to see and be seen, to hear and be heard, and, in the case of our nation's earliest psychics, to sense and be sensed.
It was these psychics who had the most to lose if the post office was a success--after all, why pay someone for telepathic communications when you could just send a letter?
This fear of competition led indirectly to the French and Indian and Psychic War of 1767, which, oddly, was more than twenty years before the invention of the Post Office, thus proving, claimed the Psychics, that the French and Indians really could foretell the future, just as the Psychics had predicted they would be able to nearly twenty years earlier.
Franklin was able to look back on the event with his usual good humor, noting in his famous brass and ivory diary: "My lappe is now most singed and indeed it would not surprise me to know that my most intimate friends should call me 'Old Singed Lappe.'"
Many of Franklin's friends did; though some misunderstood "singed" to be the past tense of "sing" and took to calling him "Old Sung Lap" instead, thinking the verb more correct. (See also: Sunglap Family of Boston).
In its earliest carnation, the Post Office was more than just a place to send or receive lap poultices. It was a meeting spot, a place to see and be seen, to hear and be heard, and, in the case of our nation's earliest psychics, to sense and be sensed.
It was these psychics who had the most to lose if the post office was a success--after all, why pay someone for telepathic communications when you could just send a letter?
This fear of competition led indirectly to the French and Indian and Psychic War of 1767, which, oddly, was more than twenty years before the invention of the Post Office, thus proving, claimed the Psychics, that the French and Indians really could foretell the future, just as the Psychics had predicted they would be able to nearly twenty years earlier.