David Riesman, after much investigation into why people read newspapers, was utterly baggled. So far as interview samplings could determine, their main function seemed to be to provide a hedge to hide behind on bus and streetcar. They were part of a commputer’s shock equipment. On the other hand, in the past century or so, the press has revolutionized transportation. The race to get and distribute news finally put an electric girdle round the earth. Shakespeare’s fancy about Puck putting a girdle round the earth in forty minutes was surpassed by telegraph and cable. Space was annihilated. And the village gossip became a world gossip. In 1844 the telegraph was greeted as “the first definite pulsation of the real nervous system of the world.”