Telegrams!

A collection of telegraph-related curiosities.

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Western Union telegram from Imogene to Adeline - sent April 29, 1932. How long do you think your Facebook messages will last?

via PhotoToaster.

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Teletypewriter with paper tape punch

Punched paper tape was one of the earliest forms of digital data storage. A message could be punched or "perforated" onto a roll of paper tape, and stored physically for transmission or re-transmission later. In the early days of computing, paper tape was used to store computer programs, which were fed into a mainframe computer from a teletype machine.

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The cable ship Colonia arriving to lay a submarine cable from Porthcurno to Fayal in the Azores in 1906.

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Correctly uniformed Western Union messenger

Take pride in your job and in your appearance

Pencil in holder, black four-in-hand tie, coat buttoned top-to-bottom, clean hands and face, puttees shined, no worn heels, cap squarely on head, hair trimmed, working kit in pocket, sleeves correct length, uniform pressed and spotless, high-top shoes polished.

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Prince Charles sent this personal telegram to Julian Nott in 1981, after Nott crossed the English Channel in a solar powered balloon.

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WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT

The United States' first publicly demonstrated telegram was dispatched on May 24th, 1844, by the system's developer, Samuel Morse. The telegram's message - WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT - was chosen from the Bible by the daughter of Morse's friend, Henry Ellsworth, and successfully transmitted from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland, instantly stunning the general public.

Equally stunning is this tattoo worn by Matthew Rothenberg of New York.

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RAILWAY TELEGRAPHS

The telegraph's intial use for the railway was to regulate the working of trains, and the London North Western Railway were among the first to be involved in its development. The London and Birmingham railway were involved in trials in 1837 between London Euston and Camden using the Cooke and Wheatstone Electric Telegraph five-needle system.

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Introduced in the 1950s, The rugged model 28 by Teletype Corporation was the Cadillac of teleprinters. Designed for continuous use, it transmitted and received 5-bit Baudot code, printing 6 characters per second using a movable block with 64 type slugs.

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1912 telegram regarding the Titanic disaster

In London, the Post Office had received word that the Titanic was in danger and became concerned for the wellbeing of the workers and the mails, as some 200 sacks of registered mail was on-board the ship. Ismay Imrie & Co., owners of the White Star Line, sent three telegrams to the Secretary of the Post Office in relation to the matter. They contain information which would later turn out to be incorrect.

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Western Union Desk-Fax, 1950s.

The Desk-Fax was a facsimile transceiver introduced by Western Union around 1952 to allow business subscribers to send outgoing telegram forms to WU offices for transmission, and to receive images of printed telegrams which arrived at the WU office, thus eliminating messenger trips. The Desk-Fax did not use regular dial phone lines like modern fax machines; rather, it was linked to the local WU office by dedicated wires. To send, the user wrapped a WU telegram blank (about 4" x 6") around a metal drum and pushed a button. The drum rotated and slowly moved lengthwise, allowing a focused light beam to scan the entire document. The reflected light was modulated by passing through a rotating, notched "chopper" wheel, and finally was focused on a phototube which converted it to an AC signal (a 2500 Hz carrier on-off amplitude modulated by the scanned image). Messages were received on a special paper called "Teledeltos", which had an electrically-conductive black carbon-bearing layer. Writing was done by a fixed, fine wire stylus to which a high-voltage was applied, burning through the coating where a black mark was required. The stylus pressed against the paper, which was wrapped around the machine's drum. All of this was accomplished with five vacuum tubes (plus the phototube), six relays, four electric motors, and assorted other electronic and electromechanical components. Transmission time took about 3 minutes.

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Laying a short length of undersea telegraph cable in the Dover Channel (from Harper's Monthly, 1873)

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1960 USSR telegram "Glory to Great October!"

Series D-5. View of the Moscow Kremlin with a waving red flag. This telegram was sent August 1960 to Tallinn (now Estonia). Telegrams were received on a teleprinter which typed the incoming message onto a reel of paper tape. The strips were then cut and glued onto the telegram blank.

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Stock certificate of AMERICAN TELEGRAPH-TYPEWRITER COMPANY, Delaware. 1912.

Dr. G. A. Cardwell manufactured telegraph keys and sounders for Western Union in a factory in New York City. In 1907 Cardwell founded the American Telegraph Typewriter Company, with offices at 27 William Street, New York City, and a factory on Prospect Street, Brooklyn, New York.

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Western Union Telegraph ad, Nova Scotia Canada 1893

Proprietors and Lessees of all the Telegraph Lines in the United States and the Maritime Provinces, from Port Hood, Nova Scotia, to San Francisco, and connecting via Atlantic Cable and Northern line with all the Telegraphs in the world. The 82 Nova Scotia telegraph offices listed in this advertisement were operated by the Western Union Telegraph Company. Anyone who wanted to send a telegram could go to any of these Western Union offices, or to any railway station in Nova Scotia and give the telegram to the railway telegrapher. For example, from 1905 to the late 1940s there were two telegraph offices in Chester, the Western Union office in downtown Chester, and the railway telegraph office at the H&SW Railway station on North Street.

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1903 map showing submarine telegraph cables laid by the Gutta Percha company. Telegraph wires insulated with gutta-percha, a natural latex produced from the sap of the Gutta Percha tree, were manufactured in the United Kingdom. It served as the insulating material for some of the earliest undersea telegraph cables, including the first transatlantic telegraph cable. Gutta-percha was particularly suitable for this purpose, as it was not attacked by marine plants or animals, a problem which had disabled previous undersea cables.

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The Central Telegraph Office of the GPO in London, October 1932, showing an impressive installation of pneumatic tubes. There were 3000 employees.

The tubes were used to send telegraph forms from local post-offices to the Central Telegraph Office, where the skilled operators were concentrated.