a
reference to the International Correspondence
School, one of the first
private correspondence
schools of the United
States, established in Scranton,
Pennsylvania, in the
late 1800s. (A correspondence
school is one that provides instruction by mail.)
ICS grew out of a
course in coal mining, offered by the editor of a mining
journal, and expanded over the years to become one of the
world's largest correspondence
schools, offering
education in many
different subjects, including
accounting, computers,
finance, various
engineering fields and
electronics.