Did Mark Twain have the internet?
In an 1898 short story called "From the London Times" written in 1904, he describes an invention called the "telelectroscope," a gadget hooked up to the phone system: "The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues."
The story itself is about the unjust conviction of an American army officer for the murder of Szczepanik, the inventor of the telelectroscope.
On death row, the officer is allowed to use the invention.
The narrator, who appears to be Mark Twain himself, is a friend who spends time with the doomed officer as he surfs around the world:
"...day by day, and night by night, he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people, and realized that by grace of this marvellous instrument he was almost as free as the birds of the air, although a prisoner under locks and bars.
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