Weekend Stubble

This morning's piece on bulletproof vest inventor Rev. Casimir Zeglen is now on the NPR Weekend Edition site. One thing I didn't explain very well on the air was why his vest was not a financial success: it's because it was comprised of thick layers of pure silk. So it was really expensive. Franz Ferdinand had one -- the archduke, not the band -- as did Kaiser Wilhelm and Teddy Roosevelt. But beyond some heads of state, there just wasn't a market for an invention as expensive as Zeglen's was.

Also, The Next Big Thing, on PRI, is rebroadcasting today my old Valentine Day's segment about Wired Love, Ella Thayer's 1879 "online romance" novel featuring two telegraph operators who have never met in person.