Inventive sidelines
Lewis Carroll (1832 -98), the author of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, had an interesting sideline in addition to his day jobs of professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and writer of children's books.
Carroll, whose real name was Charles Dodgson, was a talented inventor and creator of games. There were no iPads or smartphones around in Victorian times, so all Carroll's games involved paper, pencil and doing interesting things with words, language or shapes.
If Carroll had been around today with all the technology gamers have at their fingertips, his imagination and inventive personality would have definitely been in overdrive and who knows what he would have come up with?
Wonderland Postage Case
Victorians, both adults and children, wrote lots of letters. Today, as we rush around sending e-mails and communicating in 'txt spk', the idea of sitting down with a pen and a sheet of paper, then putting our letter in an envelope and posting it, seems a bit of an old-fashioned chore.