Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we have very exciting news some of you
Speaker 1: have heard before. We're gonna talk about it again. We
Speaker 1: are going to Paris. We're just gonna keep talking about
Speaker 1: it NonStop because the excitement level is off the charts. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: you can come with us, which is the cool part. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is information on our website. If you go to
Speaker 1: Miston History dot com and you click on the link
Speaker 1: in the menu at the top of the page, it
Speaker 1: says Paris trip. That's the one it will take you
Speaker 1: to all the info. One thing that we wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure people know is it if you are a
Speaker 1: solo traveler and you're not maybe able to corral friends
Speaker 1: to go with you, do not fret. Please go ahead
Speaker 1: and sign up because there will be lots of solo
Speaker 1: travelers and also we're all one big, happy history family
Speaker 1: running around Paris, so you will have plenty of of
Speaker 1: opportunities to socialize if you wish, uh, and then plenty
Speaker 1: of opportunities to go run away by yourself if you
Speaker 1: need downtime. Yes, I know that traveling alone, especially traveling
Speaker 1: alone to another country, can be a little intimidating, but
Speaker 1: I am a hard core supporter of that it is
Speaker 1: something I love to do myself. So regardless of whether
Speaker 1: you're traveling with a partner or a friend or by yourself,
Speaker 1: everyone is welcome. Also, we've gotten a couple of questions
Speaker 1: from folks about whether people from outside the United States
Speaker 1: can come on the trip, because the wording on the
Speaker 1: website made it sound as though you needed a valid
Speaker 1: US passport. It is open to people from other countries
Speaker 1: as well, and they are updating that language on the
Speaker 1: website and there's contact information. Um, if you go to
Speaker 1: our website, we have a link to the Defined Destination's website,
Speaker 1: which is where the trip is being coordinated, and there's
Speaker 1: contact information there and you can contact them with any
Speaker 1: specific questions you have about your travel situation. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we hope you come with us. That's gonna be June
Speaker 1: of this year and we're going to have a blast.
Speaker 1: Uh So, we hope we see you in Paris. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Polly Trying. We have kind
Speaker 1: of an accidental theme in the episode that I've researched lately.
Speaker 1: Inspired by things I read on Twitter, which makes it
Speaker 1: sound like I'm reading Twitter a lot, which is the
Speaker 1: opposite of true. It's whenever I opened Twitter, I just
Speaker 1: kind of zoom up to the top and look at
Speaker 1: the three most recent things and then go away from that.
Speaker 1: So I just coincidentally have caught various interesting tweets lately.
Speaker 1: This time it was author and science communicator Rosemary Moscow
Speaker 1: who had a Twitter thread about pigeons and how cool
Speaker 1: they are and how they are all over cities because
Speaker 1: humans put them there, so don't be mad at them
Speaker 1: for it. The pigeons didn't do it themselves. And in
Speaker 1: this thread, one of the things she said was Paul
Speaker 1: Julius Reuter of Reuter's used them to carry stock prices.
Speaker 1: And I replied and said, well, now I have to
Speaker 1: do a podcast on Paul Julius Reuter, which is where
Speaker 1: we are. The man who would later become known as
Speaker 1: Julius Reuter was born Israel Beer Yosfat on July twenty one,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen. He was born near Kassel in the Electorate
Speaker 1: of hess Castle, which would later become Prussia and is
Speaker 1: now Germany. His father was Rabbi Samuel Levi Josefat, and
Speaker 1: he was the third of four children. When the young
Speaker 1: Israel was about sixteen, his father died and he was
Speaker 1: sent to live with an uncle in Gertingen, Germany. His
Speaker 1: uncle ran a bank, and the plan was for Israel
Speaker 1: to train there and then to enter the finance industry.
Speaker 1: At about the same time, physicist and mathematician Carl Friedrich
Speaker 1: Gauss was also in Gertingen, experimenting with electrical signals and
Speaker 1: telegraph technology. It is not entirely clear how these two met.
Speaker 1: Israel would have been running errands and making deliveries for
Speaker 1: his uncle, so it's possible that he delivered something to
Speaker 1: Gauss and they struck up an acquaintance. Regardless, though Israel
Speaker 1: was fascinated by these experiments, which started in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty three, Gauss successfully sent a message over
Speaker 1: a wire from his lab um to an observatory a
Speaker 1: mile away. In eighteen forty one, when he was about
Speaker 1: twenty five, Israel started going by a new name, which
Speaker 1: was Julius. It was probably after his birth month of July,
Speaker 1: and in the early eighteen forties he also left the
Speaker 1: world of banking and started working at a publishing house
Speaker 1: in Berlin called Reuter's Publishing Company. In those same years,
Speaker 1: he also met a woman named Ida Maria Elizabeth Clementina Magnus.
Speaker 1: Some sources call her Ida, while others call her Clementina.
Speaker 1: It took me a long time to find her entire
Speaker 1: name written out and figure out what in the world
Speaker 1: was going on with that. Clementina was the daughter of
Speaker 1: a Lutheran pastor. There are some sources that describe the
Speaker 1: Magnus family as Jewish, but that seems to be an
Speaker 1: incorrect assumption based on the fact that their home was
Speaker 1: in Berlin's Jewish Quarter. That would have been a logical
Speaker 1: place for Julius to stay after arriving in Berlin. Though
Speaker 1: so he and Clementina probably meant simply because they were
Speaker 1: living in the same neighborhood. And the timeline on in
Speaker 1: all of this is a little bit fuzzy. It's not
Speaker 1: clear precisely when Julius started going by that name or
Speaker 1: when he met Clementina, but in eighteen forty five, Reuter's
Speaker 1: Publishing House sent Julius to London to try to establish
Speaker 1: a branch there. London had a large enough German speaking
Speaker 1: population that it seemed like there might be a demand
Speaker 1: for German language books, so Julius and Clementina left Germany
Speaker 1: for England by ship. Then they departed from Hamburg, but
Speaker 1: before they left they got married in a civil ceremony.
Speaker 1: They arrived in London on October forty five, and they
Speaker 1: were listed in the passenger manifest as mister and Mistress
Speaker 1: Josephat and they got a room at a boarding house
Speaker 1: and started planning another wedding, this one at a Lutheran church,
Speaker 1: officiated by a pastor. And their reasons for doing this
Speaker 1: are not documented anywhere, but most historians conclude that Clementina
Speaker 1: had gone through the civil wedding back in Hamburg so
Speaker 1: she could travel with Julius without it being scandalous or
Speaker 1: for the sake of her own conscience, but that she
Speaker 1: didn't consider herself really married without that big church wedding.
Speaker 1: On November six, shortly before this second wedding, Julius was
Speaker 1: baptized as a Lutheran, and at his baptism he took
Speaker 1: another name, which was Paul, and he also changed his
Speaker 1: surname from Josaphat to Reuter. Once again, there's no documentation
Speaker 1: of what led him to this name change, but it
Speaker 1: did mean that he was Harry Reuter of Reuter's Publishing
Speaker 1: company as he was trying to set up this London
Speaker 1: based branch of that company. Don't really know what his
Speaker 1: employer thought about the fact that he decided to do that.
Speaker 1: I imagined that opened some doors for him that he
Speaker 1: might not have had access to Otherwise. One would think
Speaker 1: maybe he was just being really really widely in that move.
Speaker 1: We don't know. But the Sunday after the baptism, Julius
Speaker 1: and Clementina got married in the church ceremony. It's still
Speaker 1: actually wasn't a very big affair. I referred to it
Speaker 1: as a big church wedding before, but it really wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was just the two of them with witnesses that
Speaker 1: were provided by the church, and then they started trying
Speaker 1: to build up their business and trying to start a family.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty six, they had a daughter named Julie,
Speaker 1: although unfortunately she died while she was still a baby.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, Julius and Clementino were a really striking couple.
Speaker 1: He was short and had very dark hair, and she
Speaker 1: was very tall and blonde. And their marriage wasn't entirely
Speaker 1: conventional by the standards of the day. Clementina was intelligent
Speaker 1: and educated and really dedicated to her husband's success, so
Speaker 1: rather than being mostly a homemaker and a helpmate, she
Speaker 1: took a really active part in all of his various
Speaker 1: business ventures. Essentially, she worked as anything from an unpaid
Speaker 1: assistant to an unpaid partner, depended on exactly what was needed.
Speaker 1: But in spite of Clementina's help, Julius wasn't able to
Speaker 1: get the London branch of Writer's publishing company off the ground.
Speaker 1: It seems like they're just was not as much demand
Speaker 1: for German books as they had anticipated, so soon the
Speaker 1: couple was back in Germany, living in Berlin, where Julius
Speaker 1: partnered with You Also Star Guard to form another publishing
Speaker 1: house called star Guard and Reuter. This was once again
Speaker 1: not one of Julius's more successful ventures. Years later, Star
Speaker 1: Guard accused Reuter of disappearing from the eighteen forty eight
Speaker 1: Leipzig book Fair, taking all of the money from their
Speaker 1: sales with him. Reuter didn't admit any guilt in all this,
Speaker 1: but he did offer to repay the money, which some
Speaker 1: people interpreted is basically admitting he had done it, while
Speaker 1: others interpreted it's just him wanting the issue to be
Speaker 1: over with and having the money to do it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I call a buy your freedom situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want you to leave me alone about this. Here
Speaker 1: is some dollars. Additionally, Reuter was publishing pamphlets that were
Speaker 1: for the time quite radical. They advocated democracy and progressive policies.
Speaker 1: This might not seem at all radical by today's standards,
Speaker 1: but a revolution swept through Germany in eighteen forty eight
Speaker 1: and eighteen forty nine. It was driven by an economic
Speaker 1: depression that included high unemployment and food shortages. Peaceful protests
Speaker 1: failed to bring about any kind of change, and after
Speaker 1: King Louis Philippe was deposed in France, the situation in
Speaker 1: Germany progressed to food riots and other violence. Reuter's pamphlets
Speaker 1: and the demonstrators were on the same side. At first,
Speaker 1: it seemed as though this revolution was going to be successful,
Speaker 1: especially after a number of progressives were installed in the
Speaker 1: German government. But these changes did not last, and soon
Speaker 1: the progressives were once again out of favor. By eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, conservatives would be back in control and all
Speaker 1: of this together led the Reuter's family to leave Germany again.
Speaker 1: They settled, this time in Paris. In Paris, Reuter got
Speaker 1: a job at of US News Agency, working as a translator.
Speaker 1: Of US News Agency was founded by char Louis Avas,
Speaker 1: who was from a Sephardic Jewish family, and the agency
Speaker 1: translated and distributed news articles. They mainly used pigeons to
Speaker 1: distribute their work, although the agency was also starting to
Speaker 1: experiment with the telegraph. This combination of news and pigeons
Speaker 1: and the telegraph would set the stage for Reuter becoming
Speaker 1: a household name in the world of international news, and
Speaker 1: we will get to that. After a sponsor break in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine, Julius and Clementina Reuter combined all their
Speaker 1: experience so far to try producing and distributing their own publication.
Speaker 1: It was essentially a newsletter. It combined stock prices and
Speaker 1: news and political goings on, sometimes a little bit of gossip.
Speaker 1: But they were once again not really able to get
Speaker 1: this off the ground. They just couldn't get enough subscribers
Speaker 1: to turn a profit. So when collectors came to seize
Speaker 1: their assets in eighteen forty nine, they decided it was
Speaker 1: time to leave Paris. The next stop was Achen, which
Speaker 1: is near the current border between Germany and Belgium. Achen
Speaker 1: had come to prominence in the eighth and ninth centuries
Speaker 1: as the home of the Emperor Charlemagne. Later and had
Speaker 1: become a thrived in center of manuscript creation and publishing,
Speaker 1: and it was well situated to be an information hub
Speaker 1: in the geography of the day. It was adjacent to Prussia, Holland, France,
Speaker 1: and Belgium, and that made it an easy connecting point
Speaker 1: for travel, trade, and information. This trend and being sort
Speaker 1: of a connecting point for all these things continued into
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century as an international railway line made its
Speaker 1: way through Achen. But then on October one, eight forty nine,
Speaker 1: a new telegraph line opened which connected Achen to Berlin.
Speaker 1: There was a separate line across the border in Belgium,
Speaker 1: and that line was a French Belgian line that ran
Speaker 1: from Paris to Brussels, so Achen was on one side
Speaker 1: of this gap in the line. The gap stretched about
Speaker 1: ninety miles or a hundred forty four kilometers between Brussels
Speaker 1: and Achen, so if somebody bridge that gap, they could
Speaker 1: connect Paris to Berlin along the telegraph line, and that's
Speaker 1: someone or really those someone's were Julius and Clementina Reuter
Speaker 1: who bridged the gap in the line with pigeons. To
Speaker 1: be clear, they definitely were not the first people ever
Speaker 1: to send messages using pigeons. Pigeons are the oldest domesticated birds,
Speaker 1: and people have been using them for food, companionship, entertainment,
Speaker 1: and carrying messages all over the world for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: Pigeons and doves are in the same family, so some
Speaker 1: people note the first documented message sent by pigeon as
Speaker 1: that moment in the biblical Book of Genesis when the
Speaker 1: dove returns to Noah carrying an olive branch after the
Speaker 1: Great Flood. Pigeons were used in ancient Rome to carry
Speaker 1: the results of chariot races, and Genghis Khan had a
Speaker 1: whole network of messenger pigeons. People have been doing this
Speaker 1: for an extremely long time. Yes, pigeons were well established
Speaker 1: as a way to send messages by this point. Reuter
Speaker 1: was just at an ideal spot to make particularly good
Speaker 1: use of them. He established the Institute for the Transmission
Speaker 1: of Telegraph Messages in Achin and on ap fifty he
Speaker 1: signed an agreement with pigeon breeder Iinrich Geller for twenty
Speaker 1: five pigeons. Geller also who they rented rooms from when
Speaker 1: they first arrived in Aen, and he may have also
Speaker 1: invested in their business. So homing pigeons only fly one route,
Speaker 1: they fly back home, and in this case home was Akin.
Speaker 1: So this whole setup required there to be somebody in
Speaker 1: Brussels to get the news from Paris by telegraph and
Speaker 1: then transcribe it, loaded up on the pigeon and let
Speaker 1: the pigeon go to fly back to Akin. Then in
Speaker 1: Akins somebody had to collect the pigeon, retrieve the message
Speaker 1: transmitted by telegraph, and then load the pigeon up into
Speaker 1: a special crate and take it to the train station
Speaker 1: to send it back to Brussels. So running this operation
Speaker 1: in Achen required both Clementina and Julius, one to run
Speaker 1: the office while the other ran all of the errands,
Speaker 1: including running those pigeons to the train station. It also
Speaker 1: required an office in Brussels with pigeons whose home was
Speaker 1: there to receive messages from Akin. That side of things
Speaker 1: was run by Prussian Army officer Lieutenant Wilhelm Stephen. The
Speaker 1: train trip between Akin and Brussels took about ten hours.
Speaker 1: By comparison, the average flying speed for a homing pigeon
Speaker 1: is roughly sixty miles an hour or ninety six kilometers
Speaker 1: an hour, so a pigeon could fly between Brussels and
Speaker 1: Knockin in about an hour and a half. That meant
Speaker 1: news carried by pigeon was much much faster than news
Speaker 1: that was put on the train and sent that way.
Speaker 1: The train, though, was still necessary to get the birds
Speaker 1: back to their starting point. Julius Reuter was thirty four
Speaker 1: when he started this venture, which focused on sending stock
Speaker 1: prices and other financial information. It was known as Mr.
Speaker 1: Reuter's Prices, and the birds were called the Pigeon Post.
Speaker 1: It was his first overall successful business, although it was
Speaker 1: really built on knowledge he had been gathering since his teens.
Speaker 1: He had learned about banking from his uncle, about the
Speaker 1: telegraph from Carl Gauss, about pigeons from his work with
Speaker 1: the Office News Agency, and about writing and publishing from
Speaker 1: various other jobs along the way. Reuter's new business grew
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. On July teen fifty, a little more than
Speaker 1: three months after they signed their first agreement. Another agreement
Speaker 1: transferred all of her Geller's two hundred pigeons over to Reuter.
Speaker 1: Reuter's success with the pigeon post wasn't just because of
Speaker 1: the ingenuity and hard work that he and Clementina put
Speaker 1: into all of this. Reuter was also starting to show
Speaker 1: some business savvy. In April of eighteen fifty, he got
Speaker 1: in touch with Rothschilds in London to sign an exclusive
Speaker 1: business deal in which Reuter agreed to get London financial
Speaker 1: information only from Rothschild's, while Rothschild's got the Berlin and
Speaker 1: Vienna prices only from Reuter, with Reuter otherwise staying off
Speaker 1: of the London market. Today this sort of collusion would
Speaker 1: be somewhere between frowned upon and outright illegal, depending on
Speaker 1: the industry and the location. But at the time it
Speaker 1: was actually pretty normal. Yes, it wouldn't necessarily be be
Speaker 1: illegal to have the exclusive agreement about who was providing
Speaker 1: stock prices and stuff. But when it came to the
Speaker 1: and I also will not do business in London, I
Speaker 1: will protect your monopoly there. Like That's the part that
Speaker 1: today not so much of a good business strategy in
Speaker 1: terms of ethics or the law depending. Reuter only ran
Speaker 1: this pigeon post for about a year. A new branch
Speaker 1: of the telegraph line opened on October two, eighteen fifty,
Speaker 1: connecting Akin to the Belgian city of Vervier. The following March,
Speaker 1: another branch of the line connected Vivier to Ostend, and
Speaker 1: then Ostend connected to a Prussian telegraph network that ultimately
Speaker 1: got back to Berlin. So as of March fifteenth, eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, there was no longer a gap that needed
Speaker 1: to be closed on a telegraph network. Later that same month,
Speaker 1: the Reuters closed up shop and Akin and they left.
Speaker 1: And this move was another major change for the Reuters.
Speaker 1: So we're going to take another pause here for a
Speaker 1: quick sponsor break. After leaving, Julius and Clementina Reuter went
Speaker 1: to London, and they had been advised to do so
Speaker 1: by Werner von Siemens, founder of the telecommunication company Siemens,
Speaker 1: who had worked on that new telegraph line that ran
Speaker 1: from Achen to Vervier. Siemens later wrote of meeting them
Speaker 1: in Achen. Quote, in the course of the construction of
Speaker 1: that line, I made the acquaintance of the owner of
Speaker 1: the pigeon post between Cologne and Brussels a Mr. Reuter,
Speaker 1: who's useful and lucrative business was relentlessly ruined by the
Speaker 1: new electric telegraph. When Mrs Reuter, who accompanied her husband
Speaker 1: on the trip, complained to me about this destruction of
Speaker 1: their business, I advised the payer to go to London
Speaker 1: and to open a telegram agency. They are similar to
Speaker 1: that just formed in Berlin by a Mr. Vofe, and
Speaker 1: we're going to get back to this Mr Volfe a
Speaker 1: little bit later. The Reuters arrived in London in October
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty one. They got rooms near the London
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange and they lodged there with a doctor named
Speaker 1: Herbert Davies. Reuter's Telegraphic Dispatch Office opened its doors on
Speaker 1: October fourteenth that the Royal Exchange Buildings, and they advertised
Speaker 1: their service this way quote. Messages to any part of
Speaker 1: the continent may be sent to this office and will
Speaker 1: be immediately forwarded. Communications from the continent to England may
Speaker 1: be addressed to Mr Julius Reuter at Kelis or Ostend.
Speaker 1: At first, this business in London was really about sending
Speaker 1: telegrams for business and personal use, as well as stock
Speaker 1: prices and financial news. It wasn't a traditional news service yet,
Speaker 1: and they weren't at all the only telegram service in
Speaker 1: the area. A lot of telegram and message services were
Speaker 1: all springing up, hoping to make money off the ever
Speaker 1: increasing telegraph lines connecting various parts of Europe. One of
Speaker 1: the articles that I read describing this whole thing talked
Speaker 1: about how before the telegraph made the use of pigeons
Speaker 1: totally unnecessary, and there was still a lot of like
Speaker 1: pigeon use connecting various people, like connecting London to the
Speaker 1: smaller towns and stuff. This part of town that they
Speaker 1: were in. You needed an umbrella because there were so
Speaker 1: many pigeons dropping so many droppings. Reuter didn't own any
Speaker 1: of the telegraph lines. He knew a lot about them, though,
Speaker 1: and he was very good at prioritizing telegraph traffic and
Speaker 1: building relationships and negotiating terms for the transmissions that he
Speaker 1: needed to send and receive. Clementina continued to work really
Speaker 1: closely with him in this business. She transcribed, she translated
Speaker 1: messages coming into and leaving the office. Eventually they were
Speaker 1: making enough money to hire a messenger boy, which was
Speaker 1: eleven year old Fred Griffiths, who would eventually work his
Speaker 1: way up to becoming a director in the company. Not
Speaker 1: long after their moved to London, Clementina got pregnant for
Speaker 1: the first time that we know about since the death
Speaker 1: of their first child. Their daughter, Julie, a son Herbert Reuter,
Speaker 1: was born on March tenth, eighteen fifty two, and the
Speaker 1: Reuters went on to have five more children, three daughters
Speaker 1: and two sons, at the rate of about one baby
Speaker 1: every other year. So there's been some speculation that Clementina
Speaker 1: had trouble getting pregnant or carrying her pregnancies to term,
Speaker 1: and that Dr Davies had helped resolve that problem, and
Speaker 1: that may be true. He did, for sure deliver at
Speaker 1: least some of the children, but he didn't specialize in obstetrics,
Speaker 1: which was still a relatively new field at the time.
Speaker 1: As the telegraph system became increasingly prolific, there were more
Speaker 1: ways for people and businesses to send their own telegrams.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to write your letter and mail it
Speaker 1: to the care of a particular person in another city
Speaker 1: in order for it then to be transmitted from a
Speaker 1: loan telegraph office that was out there. So over time,
Speaker 1: Reuter's service forwarding messages to and from the continent was
Speaker 1: not really as necessary anymore. People did, however, want the news,
Speaker 1: and in places that weren't yet connected by telegraph, whoever
Speaker 1: got a story out first was at a huge advantage.
Speaker 1: As more and more of Europe was connected by wire,
Speaker 1: it leveled the playing field. But before the first Transatlantic
Speaker 1: telegraph cable was completed in August of eighteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: speed was still key to making money from news comeing
Speaker 1: into Europe from North America. The only way for news
Speaker 1: to make its way between North America and Europe before
Speaker 1: that line was complete, which we have a whole episode
Speaker 1: on in the archive, the only way to do that
Speaker 1: was by ship. Most of these ships arriving in Europe
Speaker 1: docked at Cork, but the first place that they spotted
Speaker 1: land was in krick Haven, about seventy five miles or
Speaker 1: dred and twenty kilometers southwest. So it took about eight
Speaker 1: hours for ships to make this last leg of the
Speaker 1: journey from crick Haven to Cork and then dock and
Speaker 1: then deliver the news that they had on board. So
Speaker 1: Reuter employed small fast boats at crook Haven once the
Speaker 1: incoming vessel carrying the news caught sight of shore somewhat aboard,
Speaker 1: would chuck a dispatch off the side in a sealed container.
Speaker 1: Reuters smaller ship would retrieve it, take it back to shore,
Speaker 1: and telegraph the dispatch back to London. And there were
Speaker 1: ships doing this same thing on the other end of
Speaker 1: the journey at Nova Scotia. It cracks me up that
Speaker 1: this is how people were trying to get the story
Speaker 1: out first was just by hooking containers off the sides
Speaker 1: of boats. I mean they were sending pigeons with trust.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so writer did know that eventually there would
Speaker 1: be an underwater cable connecting Europe to North America. So
Speaker 1: just like the telegraph had closed the gap and made
Speaker 1: his pigeon post obsolete, at some point, the same exact
Speaker 1: thing was going to happen to his whole crick Haven
Speaker 1: message chucking operation. The same was true anywhere else that
Speaker 1: he was able to get an edge by being faster
Speaker 1: than his competition, so he increasingly turned his eye to
Speaker 1: actually reporting the news instead of just collecting and distributing it.
Speaker 1: He started hiring journalists and editors and started what we'd
Speaker 1: recognized today as a wire service, a service that gathered
Speaker 1: and reported News and sold it to multiple newspapers. His
Speaker 1: first subscriber was The Morning Advertiser in October eight eight.
Speaker 1: By that point, Reuter had been in London for seven
Speaker 1: years and had been naturalized as a British citizen the
Speaker 1: year before. Reuter's big break came in eighteen fifty nine
Speaker 1: with a speech made by Napoleon the Third. Napoleon had
Speaker 1: been overheard talking to the Austrian ambassador at a New
Speaker 1: Year's reception, saying something along the lines of saying he
Speaker 1: was sorry the two nations didn't have quite the friendly
Speaker 1: relationship they used to. This made international news because it
Speaker 1: implied that France might be headed toward a war with Austria.
Speaker 1: The following February seventh, Napoleon the Third was scheduled to
Speaker 1: make a speech before the French Parliament, one that world
Speaker 1: leaders suspected would confirm France's intent to go to war.
Speaker 1: Reuter took full advantage of this. He had some of
Speaker 1: his best staff on hand in Paris, and he reserved
Speaker 1: time on a telegraph line to coincide with the scheduled speech,
Speaker 1: and his agent even managed to get a copy of
Speaker 1: the speech ahead of time, under the condition that it
Speaker 1: not be opened until the speech began. Very curious about
Speaker 1: how he did that, but I do not know the answer.
Speaker 1: It's basically like embargoes that still happened today. You can
Speaker 1: have this information, but you can't publish your article until
Speaker 1: a certain time. However, though regardless of by what means,
Speaker 1: they had a copy of the speech when Napoleon did
Speaker 1: start giving it, the French agents started transmitting the speech
Speaker 1: word for word to London, where it appeared in a
Speaker 1: special edition of The Times just a couple of hours
Speaker 1: after it had been delivered. The speech did indeed confirm
Speaker 1: that Napoleon would be going to war. This was part
Speaker 1: of what would come to be known as the Second
Speaker 1: Italian War of Independence. Plenty of other papers would report
Speaker 1: on this speech later, but the Times reported it first.
Speaker 1: It's also meant that the newspapers that had been like
Speaker 1: I don't really know why I should sign up for
Speaker 1: this whole Reuter news service, a bunch of them now
Speaker 1: got on board. And then once the war actually started,
Speaker 1: Reuter also had reporters embedded with the troops in Austria, France,
Speaker 1: and Italy. In eighteen sixty five, Reuter was also the
Speaker 1: first in Europe to report the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1: That same year, he established a news office in alex Andrea.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty eight, Britain started nationalizing the telegraph service,
Speaker 1: which really affected Reuter's business and the news industry as
Speaker 1: a whole. Reuter's, the London newspapers, and the regional newspapers
Speaker 1: known as the Provincial press worked out kind of a
Speaker 1: complicated pricing scheme among themselves to make up for these
Speaker 1: changes in the telegraph system. In the process, the provincial
Speaker 1: papers formed the Press Association to give themselves collective bargaining
Speaker 1: power with Reuter. They also negotiated a whole deal in
Speaker 1: which Reuter had control of the London news market, but
Speaker 1: the Press Association had exclusive rights to Reuter's news outside
Speaker 1: of London. The Press Association also agreed not to do
Speaker 1: international reporting, leaving that to Reuter's agency, and this also
Speaker 1: contributed to Reuter trying to really diversify the businesses that
Speaker 1: he was in in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties
Speaker 1: because the nationalization of the telegraph and all the changes
Speaker 1: that then trickled down. With all of this, we're eating
Speaker 1: into his profit margin. These kinds of negotiations were also
Speaker 1: happening internationally. By eighteen seventies, three primary wire services were
Speaker 1: reporting the news from three different parts of Europe. Reuter
Speaker 1: was in England, av US was in France, and Vote,
Speaker 1: who we mentioned earlier, was in Germany, And rather than
Speaker 1: compete with each other, these three businesses got together to
Speaker 1: protect each other's monopolies in different parts of the world.
Speaker 1: On January seventeen, eighteen seventy, they agreed that Vote would
Speaker 1: be in Germany, a US would be in France, and
Speaker 1: Reuter would have the entire British Empire, and this agreement
Speaker 1: was in place until nineteen thirty four. Once again, this
Speaker 1: arrangement today would probably run a foul of antitrust laws
Speaker 1: and a lot of places, but at the time this
Speaker 1: was not an uncommon way of doing business, and it
Speaker 1: also had parallels to things happening at the same time
Speaker 1: and the more political arena like the Scramble for Africa,
Speaker 1: where countries are basically dividing Africa up amongst themselves. Also,
Speaker 1: these three services were intrinsically connected to each other. Julius
Speaker 1: Reuter and Bernhard Wolf had both worked as translators for
Speaker 1: the of US Agency, which was known in French as
Speaker 1: agents of us. In eighteen seventy one, the Duke of
Speaker 1: Saxe Coburg Gotta made Reuter a baron, and Queen Victoria
Speaker 1: later recognized his rank in Britain. In eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: Reuters expanded into East Asia. That same year, Julius Reuter
Speaker 1: was also temporarily given huge control over multiple industries in Iran,
Speaker 1: which at the time was often also known as Persia.
Speaker 1: Reuter had become friends with the Persian minister in London,
Speaker 1: and at the same time the Shah Naser Aldin Shah
Speaker 1: Kajar was making a series of concessions to British interests.
Speaker 1: He signed what was known as the Reuter Concession, which
Speaker 1: gave Reuter the rights to railways, factories, mining, irrigation and
Speaker 1: telegraphs in Iran. This went really badly. Reuter got into
Speaker 1: this without really going through any British diplomatic channels, and
Speaker 1: British politicians all over the political spectrum tried to distance
Speaker 1: themselves from it. An editorial in the Times of London said,
Speaker 1: in part quote, there has been nothing like it before.
Speaker 1: The King of Kings abdicated the functions, if not the
Speaker 1: splendor of royalty, and though still gorgeous and glittering, is
Speaker 1: unable to make a road, explore a mind, or irrigate
Speaker 1: the lands under his dominion. So he calls in an
Speaker 1: enterprising financier of the West and offers him many and
Speaker 1: precious advantages if he will relieve the Shaw and Shaw
Speaker 1: of the real duties of royalty. Meanwhile, Russia, which had
Speaker 1: been expanding into neighboring parts of the world, saw this
Speaker 1: whole thing is a huge threat and suspected that all
Speaker 1: those British officials who were distancing themselves from what Reuter
Speaker 1: had done, we're really just trying to cover up their
Speaker 1: own involvement in a British power grab. And the people
Speaker 1: of Iran were outraged the Shaw was making such huge
Speaker 1: concessions to British interests. The Shah reverse the concession after
Speaker 1: about a year, but Reuter still had interests in Iran.
Speaker 1: This revised agreement with the Shaw established an Imperial Bank,
Speaker 1: and his son George became its president. The whole thing
Speaker 1: also set the stage for another concession of tobacco interests
Speaker 1: from Iran to Brittain twenty years later, and that led
Speaker 1: to a huge uprising in Iran. The Reuters News organization
Speaker 1: kept expanding over the next decade, becoming known as the
Speaker 1: largest international news service in the world, although it was
Speaker 1: also criticized for unnecessarily graphic coverage, especially during wartime. Here's
Speaker 1: an example from an eighteen eighties three memo to correspondents
Speaker 1: written after Julius Reuter's retirement. Quote. In consequence of the
Speaker 1: increased attention paid by press to disaster et cetera of
Speaker 1: all kinds, agents and correspondents are requested to be good
Speaker 1: enough in future to notice all occurrences of the sort.
Speaker 1: The following are events that should be comprised on the
Speaker 1: service FI years explosions, floods, in inundations, railway accidents, destructive storms, earthquakes,
Speaker 1: shipwrecks attended with loss of life, accidents to war vessels
Speaker 1: and to mail steamers, street riots of a grave character,
Speaker 1: disturbances arising from strikes, duels between and suicides of persons
Speaker 1: of note, social or political, and murders of a sensational
Speaker 1: or atrocious character. It is requested that the bare facts
Speaker 1: be first telegraphed with the utmost promptitude, and as soon
Speaker 1: as possible afterwards, a descriptive account proportionate to the gravity
Speaker 1: of the incident. It's a very long way of saying,
Speaker 1: if it bleeds, it leads. Reuter retired in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: eight and his son took over the agency, although Julius
Speaker 1: continued to be involved in the business for some time afterward,
Speaker 1: and by this point the Reuter family had become really wealthy.
Speaker 1: The business also continued to try to stay ahead of
Speaker 1: new technologies that became sort of part of its pattern
Speaker 1: of business. It kept adopting faster and better ways of
Speaker 1: distributing the news as these ways were invented, including using
Speaker 1: column printers, teletypes, radio, and satellites. Julius Reuter died at
Speaker 1: his mansion of Villa Reuter in Niece, France, on February
Speaker 1: It came across the Reuter's wire quote Baron Derouter, the
Speaker 1: founder of Reuter's Agency, died at Nice this morning in
Speaker 1: his eighty third year. His wife, Clementina, died on August five,
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, in London, and not much as known about
Speaker 1: her life between her husband's death and hers, except that
Speaker 1: she had an active social life and was very good
Speaker 1: at poker. These are things we know from her obituary.
Speaker 1: At this point. They also have no living descendants. The
Speaker 1: fourth Baron Derouter died in nineteen fifty eight and his
Speaker 1: widow died in two thousand nine. But it's clear that
Speaker 1: Reuter's could not have become the company that it did
Speaker 1: without her, and without her mostly unpaid work. There aren't
Speaker 1: even any pictures of Clementina and the Reuters archive. We
Speaker 1: do know that she sat for a formal portrait at
Speaker 1: one point, but that portrait now cannot be found. I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to name this episode after both of them,
Speaker 1: but there just wasn't enough information about her, and then
Speaker 1: that seemed disingenuous. It would be impossible to tell the
Speaker 1: entire history of Reuters as a business between then and now,
Speaker 1: but Reuters still exists as an international news organization and
Speaker 1: as a division of Thompson Reuters after being acquired by
Speaker 1: Thompson in two thousand eight. Jens of Us also became
Speaker 1: a Jan's France Plus or a f P. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: two of the three places that had that sort of
Speaker 1: divvying up monopoly still exist in some form today as
Speaker 1: far as I know. Wolf did not, it was taken
Speaker 1: over by Nazis, and Is I think was later has
Speaker 1: its own Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: you think about, uh, Reuter, the man touched so many
Speaker 1: things that continued to have echoing after effects. I mean,
Speaker 1: he basically like destabilized huge parts of Iran in addition
Speaker 1: to his savvy in the business world creating news agencies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we really didn't get into it here, but I
Speaker 1: read an interesting article preparing for this that was about how, um,
Speaker 1: not just international news agencies, but domestic news agencies have
Speaker 1: a huge effect on culture and on language, because, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you and I for years have used the
Speaker 1: Associated Press style guide UM as like that was has
Speaker 1: been like the go to style guide at how stuff works,
Speaker 1: even though how stuff works has never been strictly a
Speaker 1: news reporting thing. Um and like how these style guides
Speaker 1: affect what is considered to be correct usage in all
Speaker 1: kinds of contexts, even when they're not strictly journalism contexts.
Speaker 1: It was super interesting, but also not totally related to
Speaker 1: Reuter himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, He's at the center of
Speaker 1: a lot of developments that continue to reverberate. Do you
Speaker 1: have a little bit of listener mail? I do have
Speaker 1: listener mail. This is from Charles, and Charles says dear
Speaker 1: ms Wilson and MS Fry. I enjoyed your two part podcast,
Speaker 1: that is the two part podcast on Sojournal Truth. As
Speaker 1: you are aware, the role of slavery pervaded all of
Speaker 1: colonial and early federal life. To this end, I'm sending
Speaker 1: a link to a Rutgers University magazine describing an internal
Speaker 1: investigation on the role of slavery at Queen's College, which
Speaker 1: became Rutgers College. As expected, slavery played a role, as
Speaker 1: it did in most all early colleges. Note the founder's
Speaker 1: family owned BIZ Truth. In her family, there is also
Speaker 1: recognition of the acquisition of Native American lands. Although I
Speaker 1: don't think we will have a truth and Reconciliation commission
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, I'm pleased to see some organizations are
Speaker 1: performing these discomforting activities on their own. Your work also
Speaker 1: helps make us address these truths. Kind regards Charles, and
Speaker 1: he has a link to this article. UM, thank you
Speaker 1: Charles for sending this email. I did not know that
Speaker 1: there was any connection between the university and so Journal Truth,
Speaker 1: but I looked into it and that is absolutely correct.
Speaker 1: The Hardenburg family who had been so Journal Truth and
Speaker 1: her parents like that whole family. I knew that they
Speaker 1: were a very big slave owning family in that part
Speaker 1: of New York. I had no idea that they were
Speaker 1: among the founders of that university. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for sending us this uh, this email and this link. Charles.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcasts, where at history podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot com. We are also all over social media
Speaker 1: at Missed in History. You can come to our website,
Speaker 1: which is missed in History dot com, where you'll find
Speaker 1: a searchable archive of all our episodes ever as well
Speaker 1: as the show notes, which are the sources for all
Speaker 1: the episodes that Holly and I have worked on together.
Speaker 1: And you can subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, and wherever else you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics because
Speaker 1: at how staff works dot com