Catfishing in the 1800s

Clive Thompson takes a look at a novel written in 1880 called “Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes”, the story of a telegraph operator flirting with a man across the country which has all the drama of an episode of Catfish.

Miss Nattie Rogers, telegraph operator, lived, as it were, in two worlds. The one her office, dingy and curtailed as to proportions, but from whence she could wander away through the medium of that slender telegraph wire, on a sort of electric wings, to distant cities and towns; where, although alone all day, she did not lack social intercourse, and where she could amuse herself if she chose, by listening to and speculating upon the many messages of joy or of sorrow, of business and of pleasure, constantly going over the wire. […]

“It must be very romantic and fascinating to talk with some one so far away, a mysterious stranger too, that one has never seen,” Miss Archer said, her black eyes sparkling. “I should get up a nice little sentimental affair immediately, I know I should, there is something so nice about anything with a mystery to it.”

“Yes, telegraphy has its romantic side—it would be dreadfully dull if it did not,” Nattie answered.

“But—now really,” said Quimby, who sat on the extreme edge of the chair, with his feet some two yards apart from each other; “really, you know, now suppose—just suppose, your mysterious invisible shouldn’t be—just what you think, you know. You see, I remember one or two young men in telegraph offices, whose collars and cuffs are always soiled, you know!”

“I have great faith in my ‘C,’” laughed Nattie.

“It would be dreadfully unromantic to fall in love with a soiled invisible, wouldn’t it,” said Miss Archer, with an expressive shrug of her shoulders.

Clive’s discussion of the book is here on Collision Detection and the novel itself is available here as a free ebook.