January 2011

When AMERICAN HERITAGE went to press with “The Story Behind the Tapes” in the February/March 1982 issue, my own curiosity in regard to the 1940 Oval Office recordings was far from satisfied. From the very beginning I had tried to learn as much as possible about the RCA machine itself. Tape recorders are a household item today but they did not exist in 1940. I knew that film had been used as a recording medium, but beyond that I could say very little else about the machine. Neither Henry Kannee nor Jack Romagna, the official White House stenographers during the FDR years, had any clear memories of the device, even though each of them had used it. This is not too surprising. The Continuous-film Recording Machine was in operation during a brief eleven-week period in the autumn of 1940 and thereafter was virtually ignored, if not entirely forgotten.

Mr. Richard Reeves alleges that Tocqueville “thought American women were docile” (“If Tocqueville Could See Us Now,” June/July issue). Tocqueville never used the word docile about American women, and he actually wrote the exact opposite about them.

Here is what he really wrote: “She thinks for herself, speaks with freedom, and acts on her own impulse. … She is full of reliance on her own strength. … It is rare that an American woman, at any age, displays childish timidity or ignorance. … I have been frequently surprised and almost frightened at the singular address and happy boldness [of] young women in America … an American woman is always mistress of herself”—quoted from the chapter “Education of Young Women in the United States” in Democracy in America .

In the June/July edition, Richard Reeves is quoted by Ken Auletta as saying: “People like Maxine Waters, the majority leader of the California Assembly—she’s black—told me stories of how blacks are moved up and out …”

He’s right on two counts—she is female and black but he is dead wrong on the other two. She is not a member of the Assembly; she is a member of the State Senate. She is not majority leader of either but is a freshman member of the State Senate from the Watts district of Los Angeles.

What Did Tocqueville Really Say About American Women? What Did Tocqueville Really Say About American Women? Case Closed Who Sat First? Family Portrait Tough Paper

Charles Weller was at his post in the Western Union office in Milwaukee one day in 1867 when his friend Christopher Sholes came in. With the long, tragic face of an El Greco martyr, Sholes looked to be nothing less exalted than a poet, but in fact he was collector of customs for the city. He liked to invent things on the side, and that was why he had come to see Weller: he wanted a piece of carbon paper for an experiment. “What kind of experiment?” Weller asked, handing over the paper. Sholes wouldn’t say, but he invited Weller to come around the next day and see for himself.

When Weller went over to Sholes’s office in the Federal Building on his lunch hour, he found the inventor with an inscrutable device from which a telegraph key sprouted. Holding a sheet of paper and the carbon in the machine with his left hand, Sholes tapped the key with his right, then gave the paper to Weller, who read: W W W W W W W W W. The key had batted a single typebar upward against the paper.

Since my husband and I are connoisseurs in a small way of American covered bridges, I call your attention to an error in the article “Electra Webb and Her American Past” in the April/May issue.

The piece refers to the covered bridge at the entrance to Shelburne Village as having an outside sidewalk, the last of its kind in America. Fortunately, that’s not true.

The town of Newton Falls in northeastern Ohio has a covered bridge with an outside sidewalk, and what’s more, the bridge is still in use. In addition, at Mohican State Park, also in Ohio, a covered bridge with outside walkway was built in the late fifties or early sixties by the state (wonderful Ohio!).

The piece on General Henry Ware Lawton in the April/May issue reflects two omissions.

The first, fully documented, demonstrates that this doughty warrior’s propensity to drink long antedated his tenure as military governor of Santiago. In his introduction to Chasing Geronimo: The Journal of Leonard Wood , Jack C. Lane writes that during the 1886 pursuit of the Apache warrior, “Lawton’s sole weakness seems to have been his strong taste for liquor, not uncommon among frontier soldiers. But alcohol turned Lawton into a raging tyrant, a condition which interfered with the performance of his duties. He had little patience, however, with subordinate officers who drank to excess. During the Geronimo campaign he dismissed one of his lieutenants and sent him back to Fort Huachuca charged with misconduct on account of drunkenness. Yet there is much evidence that Lawton himself did some hard drinking during the campaign and that Wood and others saved his career more than once by smoothing over his drunken rages.”

On July 16, 1945, the heavy cruiser Indianapolis departed the California coast for the Pacific island of Tinian. On board was a heavily guarded top-secret cargo destined to end the war. Only hours before the Indianapolis began her high-speed journey, the first successful atomic detonation had ushered in the nuclear age. The cruiser itself carried vital elements of the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima. Even Captain Charles B. McVay III, in command since November 1944, did not know the contents of his mysterious shipment. He had been assured, however, that every hour he cut from travel time would shorten the war. Captain McVay took this admonition seriously, and the vessel made the five-thousand-mile voyage in only ten days.