It is a fundamental law of media history: as soon as a new communications technology emerges, people will use it to make pictures of cats.
Some postcards featured cats just being cats: sipping milk from saucers, playing with yarn, basking in the sunlight. Others dressed cats up as humans, working jobs and taking part in domestic scenes.
Newspapers called it a "fresh terror" and a "Frankenstein's monster", alarmed by the product's popularity, Cure says.
"Postcards were seen as so fast," says Monica Cure, author of Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century. "There were lots of complaints about what postcards were going to do to people's reading and writing skills, because if you could just dash off a few lines, why did you need to actually learn grammar and become a good writer?"
People also feared the postcard would lead to more superficial relationships, because instead of writing pages to each other in letters, people were just sending pictures back and forth.
The first and earliest proposal for the postcard was actually shot down because "it was just too scary to have something where servants can read your
The first and earliest proposal for the postcard was actually shot down because "it was just too scary to have something where servants can read your mail".
Today, similar worries animate the conversations around social media. It's too fast, it's a national security threat, it's leading to shallower thinking.
intersected with politics. Some of the most famous postcard cats are associated with the Suffrage movement. Postcards were sold as fundraising for social causes, but postcard-making companies also pounced on any opportunity to make content around issues people cared about.
And like memes today, postcard culture intersected with politics. Some of the most famous postcard cats are associated with the Suffrage movement. Postcards were sold as fundraising for social causes, but postcard-making companies also pounced on any opportunity to make content around issues people cared about.
Cats were typically associated with the household setting, and "meant to be passive, beautiful, decorative and demure", Herr says, but at the same time, cats are predators and anyone who owns one can tell you they like to make use of their claws.
It is a fundamental law of media history: as soon as a new communications technology emerges, people will use it to make pictures of cats.
Some postcards featured cats just being cats: sipping milk from saucers, playing with yarn, basking in the sunlight. Others dressed cats up as humans, working jobs and taking part in domestic scenes.
Newspapers called it a "fresh terror" and a "Frankenstein's monster", alarmed by the product's popularity, Cure says.
"Postcards were seen as so fast," says Monica Cure, author of Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century. "There were lots of complaints about what postcards were going to do to people's reading and writing skills, because if you could just dash off a few lines, why did you need to actually learn grammar and become a good writer?"
People also feared the postcard would lead to more superficial relationships, because instead of writing pages to each other in letters, people were just sending pictures back and forth.
The first and earliest proposal for the postcard was actually shot down because "it was just too scary to have something where servants can read your
The first and earliest proposal for the postcard was actually shot down because "it was just too scary to have something where servants can read your mail".
Today, similar worries animate the conversations around social media. It's too fast, it's a national security threat, it's leading to shallower thinking.
intersected with politics. Some of the most famous postcard cats are associated with the Suffrage movement. Postcards were sold as fundraising for social causes, but postcard-making companies also pounced on any opportunity to make content around issues people cared about.
And like memes today, postcard culture intersected with politics. Some of the most famous postcard cats are associated with the Suffrage movement. Postcards were sold as fundraising for social causes, but postcard-making companies also pounced on any opportunity to make content around issues people cared about.
Cats were typically associated with the household setting, and "meant to be passive, beautiful, decorative and demure", Herr says, but at the same time, cats are predators and anyone who owns one can tell you they like to make use of their claws.
