Jon Bois "Birth of the Internet" Documentary (Secret Base, 2025)

Part 1 of a planned Jon Bois / Secret Base documentary series titled "The Birth of the Internet," uploaded December 9, 2025, running roughly 50 minutes and accumulating 323K views shortly after release. The piece frames the early telegraph story through a Home Improvement "Tim vs Al" archetype: Samuel Morse is cast as Tim the Toolman Taylor (self-promoting, technically mediocre, freeloaded off Alfred Vail's family money) and Alfred Vail is cast as Al Borland (the skilled machinist who built the actual working equipment and probably invented Morse code). The documentary covers the prehistory of long-distance signaling (9th-century Byzantine bonfire stations, Ming-era Great Wall flag/drum/cannon signals, West African talking drums), the 1820 discovery of electromagnetism by Ørsted, the elegant 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph in London, and Morse's crude first prototype built on canvas frames left over from his failed painting career. Bois highlights two whimsical "first internet moments": the May 27, 1844 casual dinner-chat exchange between Morse and Vail, and a November 16, 1844 checkers game played over the wire by Vail and a colleague named Wills. The Tim/Al framing works because the character map is clean and Bois commits without forcing it. The ten-minute setup is long for non-fans of the sitcom but earns its payoff. Production craft is signature Bois — hand-drawn visuals, Apple TextEdit interstitials, atmospheric electronic music. Factual reliability is high; the one notable overreach is presenting Samuel Morse vs Alfred Vail: Telegraph Credit Dispute as more settled in Vail's favor than mainstream academic consensus holds. The anti-Morse framing is clearly advocacy but grounded in real evidence, including Samuel Morse's Pro-Slavery and Nativist Writings. Part 2 is teased for later release. Worth the 50 minutes for anyone interested in narrative documentary craft or telegraph history.