I got a job as a research assistant this semester. I'm helping to create a 100-million-word corpus of historical American English--which means I get to spend 10 hours a week pulling old magazines off of the periodicals and then digitizing them.
Today I was working with century-old collections of Outlook Magazine. Interesting stuff being published back in 1900 and 1901. Take, for example, this bit of news from 16 March 1901:
"Next to primary election bills and tax bills, measures directed against the sale of cigarettes have occupied the most prominent place before the Legislatures that have been in session this winter. Last week the House of Representatives in New Hampshire passed one of these measures, providing that hereafter no person, firm, or corporation shall make, sell, or keep for sale 'any form of cigarette.'"
Huh. Way to go New Hampshire.
Wonder how long it lasted....
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ReplyDeleteLet us know when you find out.
Way to go indeed.
ReplyDeleteHuh... probably not long... Although if it "occupied the most prominent place" then maybe the general concesis was aginst them? *shrug*
History teaches us so many lessons. See, I thought that people still smoked in New Hampshire!
ReplyDelete