0004133373@MCIMail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (08/31/90)
Subject was titled: Re: What Hath God Wrought? In article, (Digest v10, iss604) Brader quotes Isaac Asimov concerning the "true" inventor of telegraphy, wherein Asimov credits Joseph Henry for the "invention." Henry undoubtedly contributed much toward the ultimate development of Morse's telegraph, but there were also a myriad of others who developed electrical signaling schemes for railway block traffic control. Many of these were extremely complex multi-wire, balanced-bridge DC wire circuits that would daunt one of today's Telco "wire experts." The railroad industry came to call these "telegraph," for they evolved into schemes that could signal representations of alphabetic characters and transmit messages. What fell to Morse's credit was doing it all on one wire with a serial signaling technique. But, even there, Morse seems to be overcredited, even in Asimov's book, as quoted by Brader in his message cited: >From "Asimov's New Guide to Science": >Morse's main original contribution to telegraphy was the system of >dots and dashes known as the Morse Code. Even the so-called "Morse Code" was not Morse's invention, but that of his shopworker subordinate named Vail (probably an ancestor of the Vail of AT&T fame). Morse was, in fact, an arrogant, foppish son of a rich man who frequently took long yacht trips and sessions painting in oils, leaving Vail to do the work. Morse's idea of the "instrument" to send telegraph signals was a cumbersome, piano-keyboard-like thing he called a "portrule," on which one set up the character to send, then pressed on a long lever for it to send the pulses to line. During one period of Morse's absence, Vail gave up on trying to manufacture a portrule that would work, and instead made a "key" like the one we have all seen, including a means to use it for transmission ... the code. So, what we have all been taught to call the "Morse Code" should probably really be called the "Vail Code." Morse's son wrote a two-volume biography in which he was not at all kind to his father's image. Serious students should look it up. (While I read and enjoy Asimov, he does suffer errors trained into him, just as we all do.) And, I note some readers on here have little time for "history lessons." However, if one really studies the books and how the first developers did these things, it opens a great insight into the simple basis of many of today's "wonders of telecommunications." The final truth is that all the real _processes_ were accomplished many years ago, with things mechanical and at of course slow speeds in slow volumes. What makes it all possible today is vast improvement in devices, that can do on your desktop what once took a building full of people and hardware, and do it in an eyeblink (sometimes even disgustingly wrong!). But, any complex process we have today can be broken into a series of simple processes, for which we can find an early electromechanical example. Want to understand what you are doing or what you are buying? Read the history. No one said it better than Professor Santayana in about 1903: "Those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them."
marc@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Marc Kwiatkowski) (09/01/90)
In article <11529@accuvax.nwu.edu> 0004133373@MCIMail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) writes: >Even the so-called "Morse Code" was not Morse's invention, but that of >his shopworker subordinate named Vail (probably an ancestor of the >Vail of AT&T fame). Morse was, in fact, an arrogant, foppish son of >a rich man who frequently took long yacht trips and sessions painting >in oils, leaving Vail to do the work. Morse's idea of the >"instrument" to send telegraph signals was a cumbersome, >piano-keyboard-like thing he called a "portrule," on which one set up >the character to send, then pressed on a long lever for it to send the >pulses to line. During one period of Morse's absence, Vail gave up on >trying to manufacture a portrule that would work, and instead made a >"key" like the one we have all seen, including a means to use it for >transmission ... the code. I haven't heard of the portrule before, but in the SAMS book "Digital Communications", author Campbell states that the earliest Morse receivers were much like siesmographs, that is, a drum with paper about it that rotated at a fix rate, while a pencil dragged across it and went high for the duration of the pulse. If I remember correctly, the protocol of generating a pulse followed by a long gap, would produce a MARK and a SPACE on the drum, the terms endured, but the device did not. Operators learned to simply hear Morse code by listening to the pencil motions. marc@locus.com