A gospel manuscript that depicts the telegraph

Yes, there is indeed a gospel manuscript which has a picture of a set of telegraph poles, running from Constantinople to “Babylon” — i.e. Baghdad.  Adam McCollum has written a fascinating post on it at the HMML blog.  There doesn’t seem to be a way to link to specific articles, but it’s here.

The manuscript is a Syriac manuscript, written in 1867 in the Ottoman empire.  The picture labels all the bits — the poles, the wires, etc.  

Adam also outlines how the telegraph came to run through the Ottoman lands (because our people wanted to be able to telegraph to India, basically).

Read it.  You’ll love it.

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