Most people think that distance learning is a new idea, but it dates to at least 1728 when an offer for short hand lessons that were sent weekly were advertised in the Boston Gazette. In the 1840s Isaac Pitman offered shorthand correspondence courses in Great Britain. University distance learning, with degrees, was first offered in 1858 by the University of London. In 1911 the University of Queensland offered correspondence studies in Australia. Distance courses were subsequently offered in South Africa in 1946, in Germany in 1974. In America, Charles Wedemeyer of the University of Wisconsin is the father of American distance education with his Articulated Instructional Media Project.