Existing comment:
Because telegraphic variations behave like mutations in DNA, we can trace mutations and texts backward in time and space to a point of common origin.
The newspapers telegraphically closest to Gettysburg to the north, east, and south (there was no westward line) that published Lincoln's speech:
-- the Harrisburg Daily Telegraph
-- the Philadelphia North American
-- the Baltimore American
They differ only 6 times among their 800 words.
Collating their variations allows us to reconstruct the best version of the Associated Press text as it was sent out from Gettysburg, not as chance or error happened to have created it after traveling down any particular line.
The original, reconstructed AP report, or UrAP
[One example: "our poor power"
-- "poor" found only in texts south and west of NYC
-- "poor" is in Nicolay delivery text |