dead weight, 1
model of shutter telegraph, George Murray (1761-1803 *)
National Museum of Scotland
Edinburgh, July 2010
see William Cobbett his Rural Rides (1830) on this (or a semaphore) Dead Weight —
On one of these hills is one of those precious jobs, called "Semaphores." For what reason this pretty name is given to a sort of Telegraph house, stuck up at public expense upon a high hill; for what reason this outlandish name is given to the thing, I must leave the reader to guess; but as to the thing itself; I know that it means this: a pretence for giving a good sum of the public money away every year to some one that the Borough-system has condemned this labouring and toiling nation to provide for.
*
29 December 2013
tags: William Cobbett; out of context; out of focus; out of place; shutter telegraph