Demosthenes, the Greek orator (and quote-machine), wrote in the First Philippic that Athenians were obsessed with news by word of mouth. “Thus we all go about framing our several tales,” he said. Almost 150 years earlier, this obsession was on display for all to see. The courier/messenger Pheidippides ran from the Greek city Marathon to […]
Archive for September 17, 2009
Chinese contributions to news (and the world)
Posted by: briancain | September 17, 2009 | No Comment |The Chinese are credited with many inventions that helped change the world. Their “four great inventions” had enormous impacts throughout history. Two of those great inventions had direct impacts on the dissemination of news. China’s first major contribution to news, however, was not an invention. It was the domestication of the horse circa 3500 B.C. […]
The first database, in recorded history, or what we think of as a database, according to Mitchell Stevens, author of “The History of News,” was written on clay tablets (as seen below) in cuneiform (symbolic script) around 2500 B.C. in Mesopotamia (present day Syria). Recorded on these tablets were state documents, property ownership listings, agricultural data, school manuscripts, and literary […]