gabe@sirius.ctr.columbia.edu (Gabe Wiener) (09/25/89)
With all this talk of Western Union history and whatnot, I thought that these little anecdote might be appropriate. When Thomas A. Edison was a teenager in the 1860's, he used to work in a telegraph office. At one point, he was assigned to work the graveyard shift. Now in those days, a telegraph operator would have to send a six over the line (represented at the time by the morse signal ......, although the MODERN morse signal is -....). Anyway, there was very little traffic over the circuits in those days was very light in the wee hours. Now it is a well known fact that Tom Edison liked to sleep during his work. However, he was often admonished for nodding off durning his operating hours when he failed to send the six. So he rigged a six notched gear to the movement of a nearby clock, and whenever the clock would reach the hour, the gear would promptly roll over the telegraph key sending the six, and permitting Edison to get a good night's sleep. One of the first telegraph services in the world opened in England in the early 19th century. It was based on an electric telegraph, not a magnetic one. It was called the Lawyer's Telegraph Service. It connected up the various attorney's firms through a central switchboard. The calling operator would signal the switchboard via handeles, spelling out the name of the party to be called. The operator would make the appropriate connections, and the two firms could communicate. Certain movements of the handles would cause a bell to ring at the exchange, signalling the operator to take down the connection. Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings gabe@ctr.columbia.edu to be seriously considered as a means of gmw1@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu communication. The device is inherently of 72355.1226@compuserve.com no value to us."
kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman) (09/25/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0405m02@vector.dallas.tx.us> Gabe Wiener <gabe@sirius. ctr.columbia.edu> writes: >When Thomas A. Edison was a teenager in the 1860's, he used to work in >a telegraph office. At one point, he was assigned to work the >graveyard shift. Now in those days, a telegraph operator would have >to send a six over the line (represented at the time by the morse >signal ......, although the MODERN morse signal is -....). That's because the telegraph code was American Morse, which cannot send dashes. Everything was dots, and the timing between them. Telegraphs had sounders, not buzzers. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu) [Moderator's Note: In about two weeks, I am going to run a story about the Western Union operator who was on duty in Chicago on the Sunday night of the Great Fire, in 1871. He was interviewed by the [Chicago Tribune] thirty years later, in 1901. PT]
gabe@sirius.ctr.columbia.edu (Gabe Wiener) (09/27/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0411m07@vector.dallas.tx.us> "Marc T. Kaufman" <kaufman@neon.stanford.edu> writes: >That's because the telegraph code was American Morse, which cannot send >dashes. Everything was dots, and the timing between them. Telegraphs had >sounders, not buzzers. Sorry, that isn't quite correct. Yes, the code was the American Morse Code, but American Morse _does_ indeed have dashes. Many of the characters are identical to the International Morse Code used today. As soon as I find my American Morse chart, I'll post a side-by-side chart of American vs. International Morse. Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings gabe@ctr.columbia.edu to be seriously considered as a means of gmw1@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu communication. The device is inherently of 72355.1226@compuserve.com no value to us."
davef@brspyr1.brs.com (Dave Fiske) (09/30/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0405m02@vector.dallas.tx.us>, gabe@sirius.ctr.columbia. edu (Gabe Wiener) writes: > With all this talk of Western Union history and whatnot, I thought that > these little anecdote might be appropriate. > When Thomas A. Edison was a teenager in the 1860's, he used to work in > a telegraph office. At one point, he was assigned to work the > graveyard shift. Now in those days, a telegraph operator would have > to send a six over the line (represented at the time by the morse > signal ......, although the MODERN morse signal is -....). Anyway, > there was very little traffic over the circuits in those days was very > light in the wee hours. Now it is a well known fact that Tom Edison > liked to sleep during his work. However, he was often admonished for > nodding off durning his operating hours when he failed to send the > six. So he rigged a six notched gear to the movement of a nearby > clock, and whenever the clock would reach the hour, the gear would > promptly roll over the telegraph key sending the six, and permitting > Edison to get a good night's sleep. Here's another anecdote about a famous person's work at a telegraph office. As a boy, Andrew Carnegie worked delivering telegrams. Apparently, in the early days, they did not believe that people could learn to read the telegraph by ear. They had a stylus attached to the "clicker", which drew lines on a strip of paper which was moved along the instrument. As the paper moved along, an incoming dot lifted the stylus up to make sort of a short rectangle on the paper; a dash made a long rectangle. A man would go over the strip of paper afterward, and "read" the message, type it out, and give it to a boy to be delivered. Carnegie mentions in his autobiography, that, from hanging around in the office, hearing the incoming clicks, and reading the messages before delivering them, he gradually learned to decode the messages in his head. Apparently this gave him an advantage, in that he knew the message even before the official "interpreter". I guess he could call out the message as it came in, and the other guy could just type it out, without having to look at the strip. Anyway, eventually they figured out that people could learn to read the clicks by ear. "ANGRY WOMEN BEAT UP SHOE SALESMAN Dave Fiske (davef@brspyr1.BRS.COM) WHO POSED AS GYNECOLOGIST" Home: David_A_Fiske@cup.portal.com Headline from Weekly World News CIS: 75415,163 GEnie: davef