Protons

Bloomberg’s reporters had fun with the elderly Supreme Demons, who evidently don’t spend much time on social media. The court was dealing with a case where an asshole wanted to block Trump from blocking the asshole’s tweets, because Trump is Trump and everyone knows that everything Trump does is evil because it’s Trump, even though the same actions are admirable when committed by Non-Trump.

Of course there’s one GIANT exception to this rule. Trump committed the biggest and evilest crime in history when he imprisoned and strangled and shut down the entire country for two years, but this is admirable because it infinitely enriched Bezos and Fink and Ackman. The Trumpness of Trump isn’t automatically a crime when Bezos and Fink and Ackman benefit from the crime, only when some D asshole is bothered by some miscellaneous ordinary thing Trump did.

= = = = =

The Bloomberg reporter noted that Chief Demon Roberts tried to give a technical description of social media as “just protons moving around”. Bloomberg correctly sees this as an absurd form of reductionism that misses the whole purpose of a system for social control. It’s also technically stupid, since protons aren’t what moves.

Made me curious. Did judges have similar trouble understanding the earlier forms of electrical communication? A quick lookup shows the answer is NO.

The very first major court case about telegraphs was O’Reilly vs Morse in 1853. (Page 120 of this PDF.) Very few people had experience with ANYTHING electrical in 1853. Steam engines and railroads and industrial machinery were common, but nothing except telegraphs was electrified. Telegraphs were a specialized tool, only handled by the operators, never touched by civilians.

O’Reilly had built and profited from a regional telegraph system using Morse’s invention verbatim. O’Reilly gave different names to the parts of his system and tried to claim that Morse’s patents didn’t apply. The Supremes correctly and intelligently disposed of O’Reilly’s claim. Taney wrote a concise and complete and ACCURATE account of the history of electricity and electromagnetism, up to the point in 1837 where several telegraphs were invented at the same time, riding on the same shoulders. Taney clearly understood the principles, even though he had never used anything electrical.

= = = = = START TANEY:

The defendants contend that all, or at least some one of these European telegraphs, were invented and made public before the discovery claimed by Morse; and that the process and method by which he conveys intelligence to a distance is substantially the same, with the exception only of its capacity for impressing upon paper the marks or signs described in the alphabet he invented.

Waiving, for the present, any remarks upon the identity or similitude of these inventions, the court is of opinion that the first branch of the objection cannot be maintained, and that Morse was the first and original inventor of the telegraph described in his specification, and preceded the three European inventions relied on by the defendants.

He pursued these investigations with unremitting ardor and industry, interrupted occasionally by pecuniary embarrassments; and we think that it is established, by the testimony of Professor Gale and others that early in the spring of 1837, Morse had invented his plan for combining two or more electric or galvanic circuits, with independent batteries for the purpose of overcoming the diminished force of electromagnetism in long circuits, [now called relays] although it was not disclosed to the witness until afterwards; and that there is reasonable ground for believing that he had so far completed his invention, that the whole process, combination, powers, and machinery, were arranged in his mind, and that the delay in bringing it out arose from his want of financial means.

= = = = = END TANEY.

My depiction of Morse’s original linotype-style system.

Steinheil’s grounded system, one of the Europeans mentioned by Taney.

Wheatstone’s parallel data system, successful before 1837, but entirely different from Morse and Steinheil’s serial systems and thus not among the patent competitors.