Twitter may be headed to the moon with 17 million US visitors in April but there’s surprising evidence that a “Twitter-like” service called the Notificator was up and running in London in 1935.
Robot Messenger Displays Person-to-Person Notes In Public
Source: Modern Mechanix (Aug, 1935)
TO AID persons who wish to make or cancel appointments or inform friends of their whereabouts, a robot message carrier has been introduced in London, England. Known as the “notificator,” the new machine is installed in streets, stores, railroad stations or other public places where individuals may leave messages for friends.
The user walks up on a small platform in front of the machine, writes a brief message on a continuous strip of paper and drops a coin in the slot. The inscription moves up behind a glass panel where it remains in public view for at least two hours so that the person for whom it is intended may have sufficient time to observe the note at the appointed place. The machine is similar in appearance to a candy-vending device.
Everything’s stolen nowadays. Why, a fax machine is just a waffle iron with a phone attached!
If you had an “upload to Facebook,” app, I would have uploaded this article to my Facebook friends. 🙂
This isn’t a twitter precursor. It has a business plan.
Quite fascinating really.
If you wired that thing up to a telegraph, then you’d be on to something.
…and then what happened? WWII? Video surveillance? AOL?
Seems everything comes into vogue, then disappears only reappear bigger, faster, and better later down the road.
HA! LMAO!
That was great, Grampa!
Lol. very interesting article. Make sense though, Twitter is a very simple idea.