Early Bloggers

I’ve recently been reading "Saratoga," written by Richard L. Ketchum. The book is a fascinating, in-depth look at the Revolutionary War battle that changed American history.
In this age of instant communications, the fact that it took letters weeks and months to go from one place to another—assuming they arrived at all—is hard to believe. Even more interesting are the challenges faced by people who created those communications.
For example: Where did they get ink with which to write home? It was challenge enough to find paper and quill pens. The ink was a special situation in which nature played a major role—more so in those days than it does now.
Powdered ink was carried by most soldiers. With it they recorded the important and mundane moments of the life of a soldier in the field. From the letters they wrote and diaries they kept, we get a glimpse of what life must have been like. The terror of soldiering, however, rarely filters through.
Ketchum says the ink was known as gall ink, made of ferrous sulfate (or copperas) and galls from the bark of oak trees. Both contain tannic and gallic acid. The two substances were mixed with gum arabic from the Middle East to give body to the ink and keep it from flowing too fast. The ingredients were then reduced and sifted through cloth to make a fine powder.
When a soldier wanted to write a letter, he mixed the powder with rainwater (something all soldiers have always had an abundance of, except maybe our current crop of warriors), or he used white wine or beer—always in short supply.
And we complain about hard drives crashing and servers going down.