100 years ago today: Thomas Edison predicted the e-book

Or something like it. The June 23, 1911 Miami Metropolis reported Thomas Edison’s “predictions of an amazing nature,” including books “so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume.” A book two inches thick would contain forty thousand lightweight “leaves of nickel.” Edison had produced such sheets from nickel, “more flexible than paper and ten times as durable.”

Edison’s other predictions included steel furniture “converted by cunning varnishes to the semblance of rosewood or mahogany or any other wood her ladyship fancies” and colossal flying machines that would enable one to “breakfast in London, transact business in Paris and eat his luncheon in Cheapside” (likely referring to the street in London).

Click on the image below to read the 1911 Miami Metropolis story.

Tags: newspapers

Camp Murphy Message spotlighted local female wrestlers

Last week we told you about the collection of the Camp Murphy Message from the World War II base, now Jonathan Dickinson State Park. We’ve made the issues of the newspaper available online here at HistoricPalmBeach.com.

The papers had been saved by Robert Maertz of West End, Wis., near Milwaukee, who’d done radar training at the camp.

The family recently came across them in a box as Maertz prepared to move, daughter Sally Wise said this month.

Sally said her dad, who later ran a family clothing and general store, also had taken many photographs and “kept really detailed information. All the names are on the back.” She said he sent the pictures to his childhood sweetheart, whom he’d later marry.

It was Sally, a retired schoolteacher, who contacted the Post after deciding the public should have access to these treasures.

In a Nov. 5, 1943 photo (below), a lady flexes her muscles. A caption reads: “Carmelita Mullis, ‘Amazon Bone Crusher,’ will wrestle here in the Camp Murphy Ring on November 16. This female flounderer of feminine pulchritude will appear in an exhibition match with another of her fair sex.”

Carmelita, an Oct. 29, 1943 story says, was 18 and “a commercial artist during working hours.” It said she wasn’t a pro but had wrestled in exhibitions at area military bases. It said she was willing to wrestle any soldier between 120 and 130 pounds, including officers. By the Nov. 5, 1943, story, that offer had been rescinded.

The Nov. 12, 1943 article identified her opponent as “Annette Henderson, also of West Palm Beach.”

Sadly, we don’t have the Nov. 19 issue, and the Nov. 26 edition makes no mention of the epic match. But we weren’t nearly as intrigued as 58-year-old Danny Waters of Lake Park, son of Carmelita, “My goodness. I never had a clue. I never heard of any of this growing up,” he said this month.

He said his mom died young, in 1957, when he was 3, and his dad in 1972, when he was a teen.

Records show Bonnie Carmelita Mullis married Charles Eddie Waters. Son James, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, was born in 1950.

“I hardly knew my mom,” older son James said. “Fond memories, from what I can remember.”

Special thanks to Post staff researcher Michelle Quigley.

The sports page of the Nov. 5, 1943, edition of the Camp Murphy Message featured an upcoming wrestling match featuring ‘Amazon Bone Crusher’ Carmelita Mullis.

Photos courtesy of Robert Maertz

The note on the back of this photo from Robert Maertz lists, left to right, Geiger, Major, Mandarish, Dunn, Cook, Sgt. Schefts, Ney, Rynders, Lee, Eklund, Hanfland, Kurtz, Owen, Kissin, Maertz, Malek, Blumquist, Cohen, Henry, Polkowski (a few men are not identified).

Left to right, Hanson, Mainwaring, Cook (one of the men is not identified)

Robert Maertz at Camp Murphy

Mass at Lummus Park

Jay Walker on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach

Urinals at Camp Murphy

Tents set during 13 mile trek

Ione Jensch, Robert Maertz’s fiancee

Ione Jensch on the road to Jackson Beach near Stuart

Tags: Camp Murphy, Martin County, newspapers, World War II

Old newspapers key to region’s bygone days

History often is about coincidences. After director Sidney Lumet died April 9, our May 5 column mentioned the play he produced at Camp Murphy, now Jonathan Dickinson State Park in southern Martin County. It got a rave review in the base’s Camp Murphy Message.

As we were writing the column, Post staff researcher Michelle Quigley got a thick package from, coincidentally, her native Wisconsin.

Inside: 12 issues of the Message, from Oct. 1 to Dec. 24 of 1943.

The Murphy newspapers are rife with news about promotions, transfers, marriages and babies; the usual inside jokes about the dreariness of camp life, and “cheesecake” — publicity photos of long-forgotten bit actresses — as well as not-so-nice comments about Germany and Japan that would be politically incorrect today but were allowed during war.

You’ll recall that last year we got several copies of the newspaper at Morrison Field, later Palm Beach International Airport.

These periodicals serve not only as snapshots of a long-gone era in South Florida, but give insight to the everyday life of GIs training in what was for most of them a strange and beautiful but blasted-hot place.

Many, of course, liked it so much they came back. Florida’s population in 1940 to 3 million in 1950 and 7 million in 1970.

Quigley has painstakingly scanned every page and posted them on our here for you to enjoy.

One person who’s viewing the pages — and who read last week’s column with interest — is Irwin Wiesenthal of suburban Boynton Beach. He was in the show!

Wiesenthal, 1943

Wiesenthal, 2011

“We sang. We danced,” Wiesenthal, now 88, recalled last week. “It was a farce on the Army. About basic training.”

The show had only one performance. Not because it bombed. But because the cast was shipped out and scattered to other bases. Wiesenthal said he briefly saw the director after the war, when Lumet was struggling to break into Broadway, but never again after that.

Wiesenthal was in the Pacific but saw no combat. He later spent decades in sales and marketing in fabrics in the New York area and retired to South Florida in 1992.

Next week: “The Amazon Bone Crusher.”

Front page of first edition of Camp Murphy Message, Oct. 1, 1943.

Tags: Camp Murphy, Martin County, newspapers, World War II

The Camp Murphy Message: The weekly newspaper of the World War II Southern Signal Corps camp

Camp Murphy in southern Martin County was established in 1942 as the home of the Southern Signal Corps School for radar operation instruction during the early years of World War II.

We’ve been fortunate enough to receive a dozen copies of the camp’s weekly newspaper from a Wisconsin reader whose father was stationed at Camp Murphy.

The newspapers provide a wonderful snapshot of life at the camp during the last three months of 1943. We’ve scanned them so you can read every page online here.

Camp Murphy Message, October 1, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, October 8, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, October 15, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, October 22, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, October 29, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, November 5, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, November 12, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, November 26, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, December 3, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, December 10, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, December 17, 1943

Camp Murphy Message, December 24, 1943

Tags: Camp Murphy, Martin County, military, newspapers, World War II

Pioneer published area’s first newspaper

Our Sept. 2 column on Twin Lakes, successor to Palm Beach High, prompted another look at Guy Metcalf.

He helped push for Palm Beach County’s split from Dade, was one of the new county’s first schools superintendents, and, of most interest to this column, was publisher of the region’s first newspaper.

The Ohioan founded the Indian River News in Melbourne on Feb. 24, 1887. It moved to Juno (the original and now defunct Juno; not nearby Juno Beach) and was renamed the Tropical Sun.

It moved to West Palm Beach in 1895, following the railroad.

At the time, it was the only newspaper in South Florida, north of Key West. Newspapers from New York took 40 hours to get to the area; before the railroad, they’d taken four to six weeks.

By April 1898, as the Spanish-American War was sparking fear in the region, Metcalf asked Washington to mount guns in Palm Beach to protect its hotels. He also pushed through the first road to Miami, in 1892.

Metcalf’s publishing competition was the Gazetteer, published by C.M. Gardner. Metcalf feuded vigorously with Gardner and once hit him in the head with a printer’s mallet, sending Gardner tumbling down a flight of stairs.

In 1900, Gardner became involved in an argument with a 17-year-old he had insulted in print and was shot and killed.

With the newspaper market cornered, Metcalf campaigned hard for the construction of Palm Beach High, now the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, which opened in 1908.

The Tropical Sun was sold to Henry Flagler interests in 1902. The first incarnation of The Palm Beach Post was seven years away. Metcalf served as mayor in 1904 and 1905. He later pushed for separation from Dade, and Palm Beach County formed April 30, 1909. It had about 5,000 residents.

J.C. Harris, founder of the downtown West Palm Beach store that still operates — was the first Palm Beach County schools superintendent. Metcalf followed.

In 1918, Metcalf was arrested for forging a bill for $333.49 for science equipment. The next morning, he was found in a chair in the vault of his office, dead of a bullet to the head in an apparent suicide. He was 52.

Sources: Palm Beach Post archives and Stuart McIver’s Glimpses of South Florida History

Guy Metcalf

Downtown West Palm Beach was officially 6 years old when this picture was taken in 1900. On Nov. 5, 1894 — just a few months after the railroad reached the area from the northeast — many of the town’s residents gathered and voted to incorporate. The first high school, Palm Beach High, opened in 1908.

Tags: newspapers, schools