An excerpt from my interview with Derrick Pratt from the Erie Canal Museum on the intersection of whiskey and the building of the canal, how out of control canalers influenced temperance, the infamous Bloody Valley of Watervilet, and some beef between the canalers and… well… everybody else.

People have been milling flour and baking bread variations for literally millennia. The Erie Canal has been moving wheat since day one. And yet, a few miles from the canal and it was almost impossible to find local wheat on my little food journey.

In this episode of Was Is Could Be: Some history on the industrialization of flour.

“A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

In the first part of this episode, we describe this predication made by Nikola Tesla about the cell phone.

But could Tesla also have predicted that these pocket phones would come to take place of watches, of letters, of maps, and of computers as a whole?

This is Was Is Could Be and this is the 2nd part of our series on phone communications in America - this time focusing on the cell phones.

In 1926, Nikola Tesla - the famed inventor - sat down with John B. Kennedy of Collier’s Magazine for an interview.

In it, he predicts that people will be able to carry phones in there pocket, and will be able to see and hear one another as if we were right next to one another.

But could he have predicted the way that mobility has changed the way we live? And if he did, would he have approved?

In this 2-part series, I talked to a telephone expert and a good friend to ask the question: Has mobility improved or hindered the way we communicate today?