Wunsch Lab intern blogs about working with the Peterson Telegraphy Collection

By guest contributor, Leslie To

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During my time as an intern working on MIT’s Peterson Telegraphy Collection, I got to look at a lot of interesting books and papers. Some of my favorite documents were old telegrams. It was so interesting to be able to look back and see what people had written. The telegram forms themselves were also fun to examine because of the imagery and the wide variety of fonts used. Some of the forms seemed to use a different font for each line. I especially liked the branch-like font on the National Telegraph form.

Wired: A World Transformed by the Telegraph, the current exhibit in the Maihaugen Gallery (14N-130) features more than 60 artifacts from the Peterson Telegraphy Collection. Several interns helped to clean and provide custom housings for the telegrams, images, books, video, and ephemera included in the 60 cubic feet of records.

Visit the Maihaugen Gallery Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. The exhibit runs through mid June 2015.