AS SEEN ON TV: EDWARD P. MITCHELL

In researching the story behind the classic Christmas editorial "Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus", I first learned about this man:

EDWARD P. MITCHELL

AS SEEN IN:
"Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus"

AS PLAYED BY:
Ed Asner

From Wikipedia:
Edward Page Mitchell (b. Bath, Maine, March 24, 1852 - d. New London, Connecticut, 1927) was an American editorial and short story writer for the New York Sun, a daily newspaper. He became that newspaper's editor in 1875, succeeding Charles Anderson Dana. Mitchell retired in 1926, a year before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. Decades after his death, Mitchell was recognized as a major figure in the early development of the science fiction genre. Mitchell wrote fiction about a man rendered invisible by scientific means ("The Crystal Man", published in 1881) before H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man, wrote about a time-travel machine ("The Clock that Went Backward") before Wells's The Time Machine, wrote about faster-than-light travel ("The Tachypomp"; now perhaps his best-known work) in 1874, a thinking computer and a cyborg in 1879 ("The Ablest Man in the World"), and also wrote the earliest known stories about matter transmission or teleportation ("The Man without a Body", 1877) and a superior mutant ("Old Squids and Little Speller"). "Exchanging Their Souls" (1877) is one of the earliest fictional accounts of mind transfer.

You really should check out the rest of his Wikipedia page; Mitchell was a fascinating man ahead of his time.....
BCnU!