Sir Derevish Montbollard displays a prototype of his patented Personal Mobile Telegraphonic Device (P.M.T.D.), a wrist-mounted, self-powered telegraph destined to revolutionize human communications by making telegraphic interactions as simple as plugging one’s P.M.T.D. into the growing number of public telegraphic ports, instantly connecting the individual’s device with an international wired network.
Sir Derevish demonstrated his device at a recent meeting of the Royal Academy of Telegraphonic Engineers by engaging in a piquant dash-dotted interchange with his colleague and mentor, Lord Phisbury Bafflebroke, currently on sabbatical in Thebe. (Lord Bafflebroke is said to be engaged in expansive research on the Aegyptians’ use of polished bronze reflectors and receptors to use the abundant sunlight to communicate across the vast distances of the Kemet’h Empire.)
The Times reported that the assembled telegraphists—as a rule, a group not easily moved to emotional displays—were initially dumbfounded, and then rose as one in a spasm of delighted applause and full-throated huzzahs as the true import of what they were witnessing dawned upon them: a simple, eminently portable and personally-mobile device that, once put into mass production, could very well signal the birth of a new age of human interaction and communication. Those few naysayers in attendance were heard to mutter that the device augured the end of handwriting, the Royal Mail, and human conversation. Others raised concerns about the potential unknown physiologic effects of binding an instrument that generated such considerable aelectrickal energies so closely to the ulnar neurovascular bundle.
Lady Battersmith penned a note to the Editor in which she suggested dire sociological results of Montbollard’s device: “What, then, shall become of those little telegraph-boys who are always about? More burden for the urchinaries and povertaria, I should imagine!” Montbollard’s P.M.T.D. will be put into production early next year by Crabapple & Fenestrate Industries, and sold across the Empire under the “One’s Own Telegraph” brand.
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To see what else Evan is up to, please visit his website here: Evan Butterfield Photography