The Place where Ido Began

This gives a hint

It’s pretty commonly known that the committee that proposed Ido as “the” international language met in Paris in October 1907.[1] The committee, as Esperantists note, was pretty much self-selected, and no one had made any sort of promise to abide by their decisions. If the major academic journals of the world and the diplomatic corps had said that within a year of the decision, they would switch over to whatever language the committee chose, we’d all know that language right now.[2]

None of the histories of the incident that I’ve seen (both from the Idoist and Esperantist sides) seem to mention just where the conference happened, other than Paris, and Paris is a big place.[3] But an article that appeared in the Daily Arizona Silver Belt on November 8, 1907 may give a hint. At the same time, the article makes a claim that probably wasn’t true. And other portions of it are somewhat mistaken.

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Professor Teaches Esperanto at Start of Peripatetic Career

Esperanto: It's all the rage!

The Salt Lake Herald devoted an entire column to Esperanto in its October 8, 1906 edition,[1] noting that the language “is all the rage just now with linguists and students of ethnology the world over.” I’m not sure why it would be the rage with students of ethnology[2] (or even that it were), though it certainly garnered a lot of interest among linguists and other sorts of language experts. Their article cited two professors, with apparently nothing in common but Esperanto. In the early period, Esperanto did have a great deal of popularity among academics.

The article starts by mentioning that, George Wise, a University of Utah professor would be leading a group in the study of Esperanto. After a lengthy description of Esperanto, a sample, and a translation, we get to another professor, George Macloskie of Princeton University.[3] I’ll excerpt that too, since it makes a surprising (and inaccurate) claim.

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Well, They Are Phony Doctors

There's an old joke.

A woman gets introduced to another guest at a party, and since he was referred to as Dr. Jones, she says, "I have a question about this pain in my shoulder."

"I'm sorry," he says, "I'm not that kind of doctor. I'm a Ph.D., a doctor of philosophy."

"And what kind of disease is philosophy?"

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