Message in a Pocket

 Fascinating discovery in the pocket of an 1880 bustle dress!

@ctvnewstoronto Coded messages found in the folds of a Victorian-era dress were finally cracked by a University of Manitoba researcher almost a decade after they were discovered. The code, dubbed The Silk Dress Cryptogram, was once considered one of the top 50 unsolved codes in the world until it was cracked by Wayne Chan in 2022. #ctvnews #ctvnewstoronto #toronto #foryou #fyp #newstiktok #manitoba #silkdress #cryptogram #codecracked #victoriandress #bustledress ♬ original sound - ctvnewstoronto

https://www.tiktok.com/@ctvnewstoronto/
 

More info on the Silk Dress Cryptogram

Cryptic notes, secret pockets and a UM code cracker 

The full report.

Merry Christmas!

 From all of us at the Calgary (CG) Chapter of the Morse Telegraph Club.
May you have a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous 2024!

Comrades

 From the Telegraph Office

WE ARE COMRADES, JOHN 

by Jerry Newton

Yes! comrades, John, for thirty years,

Not in the usual way,

Comrades, though we have never met,

This may seem strange to say.

 

You've worked one end - I the other,

Of a circuit all these years,

We've shared our joys - the fates bestowed

Our sympathies and tears.

 

We both are growing shaky, John,

Our MORSE is not so clear,

And not so musical as when

Our cups were full of cheer.

 

Our dashes are of weary length,

Our spaces uncontrolled,

Our punctuation incomplete,

Our touch is not so bold.

 

You always make six dots for H,

Eight for the letter S,

But the alphabet is growing old,

We too are, John - I guess.

 

I will not chide you further,

John, Alas! `tis too my fix,

When H and P I try to make,

I always make a six.

Gene Autry Telegrapher?

 An interesting story.

The Gene Autry story

Gene Autry, the singing cowboy. Yes, he is from a different period of time and this generation may not know him as well as past generations. However, they surely have heard him (even if they didn’t know it). Who doesn’t know “Here Comes Santa Clause” or “Frosty the Snowman”? Yep. That’s Gene Autry. What about “You Are My Sunshine”? Bet you can at least sing the chorus.

What you may not know is the story of how Gene Autry learned the true meaning of “the show must go on”. It all started when the singing cowboy was on a movie promotional tour in 1938 and one of the stops was Columbia, Tennessee. Gene was set to perform at the Princess Theatre, but during as soundcheck it was discovered that the P.A. did not work. When asked if there was anyone in town that could repair the equipment, the suggestion was W. A. Orman. It was just a short trip next door to the telegraph office at the Bethel to get Mr. Orman. However, Mr. Orman said that although he could make the repairs, he could not leave the telegraph. It was suggested that someone else could watch the office while he was away. The problem was that person would need to know how to use the telegraph and that required a knowledge of Morse Code. Turns out that Gene Autry knew both and volunteered to man the telegraph. He had worked as a young man at a telegraph office. In fact, the story goes, that is where he was discovered singing on the job by another legend, Will Rogers.

Well, Gene Autry must have really enjoyed his time in Columbia because he wrote about this story in his autobiography, “Back in the Saddle Again”. He also let Mr. Orman take a couple of candid shots around town. You can see those photos in our Spring Show gallery.

The Brasspounder

Here is another interesting review from Jim Haynes at the old Telegraph Lore website.

Enjoy
73
Ciao
KJ

The Brasspounder
by D. G. Sanders
Copyright 1978, ISBN 0-8015-0881-9
Hawthorn Books, Inc., New York

D. G. Sanders grew up in the little coal mining town of Hemlock, Ohio. At the age of thirteen he got interested in telegraphy by hanging around the railroad depot. "Now be it noted that in that day [1912] telegraphers were a special kind of people. They were thought to be especially talented and their advice was sought. They got notices in the paper now and then, and fables were attached to some. There was one fabulous fellow, never named, who could send a message with one hand while taking down another message with the other hand..." The station agent helped him to learn Morse code. By taking care of horses, and by trapping muskrats, he earned enough money to order a Morse practice set from Sears, Roebuck. A four mile walk took him to a town where the telephone company would sell a used but still serviceable battery for a nickel.

When he was sixteen his family moved to Coshocton, a city large enough to have a bustling Western Union office. Within a few days he had acquired his first pair of long pants and a job as a Western Union bicycle messenger. A fringe benefit of that job was an opportunity to learn telegraphy. After a few months he realized that a career with Western Union would entail working in an office in a city, and that the rural life was more to his liking. A railroad worker friend suggested that he use the railroad telegraph to introduce himself to a supervisor and ask for a job. He was hired by Pennsylvania Railroad and sent to a station to work and be trained on the job. After five months he was assigned to a signal cabin where he would work alone. He was a few months short of seventeen years old - he had told the railroad he was 17 already.

The rest of the book is more about railroading than about telegraphy. There was a close relationship between Western Union and the railroads. He mentions that in small towns the railroad station might also be the Western Union office, and that in larger towns the railroad office might be used for telegraph business outside the hours when the W.U. office was open. On one occasion Sanders' boss from his Western Union days telegraphed him at at his railroad office, offering him a one-night moonlighting job receiving returns from the 1916 Presidential election. He typed these on transparent paper, which was then used with a magic lantern to project onto a sheet attached to a building across the street, where the public was gathered.

He mentions the distinctive style, or "fist", of each telegrapher, whereby he could identify who was sending. The possibilities for ambiguity in American Morse code led to some confusing and amusing messages, as when a bridge inspector's report was copied as "Found a lion under bridge 16..." (the intended message was "Foundation under bridge 16...").

In 1922 he was furloughed because a coal strike left his branch of the railroad without any traffic. He quickly found work as a farm hand, but after a month was called to Akron where the railroad was swamped with telegraph work. He could have remained there after the strike was over, but preferred to return to his former station. In 1937 he was offered the opportunity to become a train dispatcher, but turned it down so that he could remain in the country. In 1938 he got the second-shift operator's spot at Orrville and remained there until retirement in 1965, with 50 years service. He notes that by the end of World War II there were many railroad signal operators who did not telegraph.

 

The White Flyer

 In honour of Halloween here is short tale from Syracuse Post Standard.

Enjoy
KJ

Syracuse Post-Standard, Sun., Sept. 23, 1945

Just Around the Corner

By Bertrande (Bertrande Snell)

Not so many years ago, the village depot was a kind of general meeting place, where citizens in all walks of life were prone to meet informally and often to discuss the pros and cons of this and that, while waiting for the evening train from the city.

There was always a continuous flow of light, or heavy, sarcasm thrown in the general direction of the station agent, who, generally, richly deserved it and always had more or less an adequate answer.

Yes, sir, it was always a jovial and carefree crowd that watched No. 3 come in, each evening. After the train's departure, the agent always hied himself homeward, leaving the premises to the tender care of the night operator. All he had to do was hang around from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. - or whatever time the usually fat and always blowsy agent considered near enough - sweep the floor, trim the lamps, copy train orders and telegrams off the Morse wires, and, hardest of all, keep awake - at which last task he was seldom successful.

It was, of course, one of these night men who first saw and reported the "White Flyer" - a legend on the old RW&O railroad- which more or less serves the village north of Syracuse to Watertown and points north and east.

This branch of the NYC has from time immemorial, been known as the "Hojack." The origin of this title seems to be lost in the mists of antiquity, which mists will be in some future article, endeavored to pierce - but that will be another story.

To return to the "White Flyer."

In the lonely watches of the night, as the presumably wide awake telegrapher kept his lonely vigil at the key, he would, betimes, hear a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, and peering fearfully through the window, he would see the White Flyer - ghostly engineer at the throttle and fireman with his hand on the bellrope - tearing swiftly through the night.

It was never my good, or ill, fortune to see this phantasmagorum, but I have the (almost)unimpeachable evidence of many old-time Hojackers who did.

There was George Murphy, now retired and dwelling in Phoenix, who counted the coaches on the ghost train, as it swept through Parish. He made the number six, but Frank Hayner at Mallory claimed there were but five that night.

You don't suppose, do you, that they might have stopped at Hastings and switched one?

George Rowe relates that he saw the White Flyer pulling in to Central Square about 3 a.m. one dark, misty night.

He grabbed a red lantern and ran out on the tracks to flag it. George says he caught his foot on the outside rail and fell flat, directly in the path of the on-rushing train, which passed over his prostrate body, doing him not the slightest harm. He admits, however, that he was considerably peeved!

Railroad Telegraphers Handbook 1991

This delightful little book was printed in 1991 and has since gone out of print.
However the Internet Archive has a scanned/PDF copy available for download at the link under the title below.

This review comes courtesy of Jim Haynes at the old Telegraph Lore website.

Enjoy
73
Ciao
KJ

Railroad Telegraphers Handbook
by Tom French, 1991

The Railroad Telegrapher's Handbook is a newly-written (1991) book that tells all about how Morse telegraphy was used on railroads until nearly the present time. (An article in Dots and Dashes reproduces a train order that was received by Morse in 1982, on the Burlington-Northern, and may have been the last train order so transmitted.) Lists of operating rules are given, presumably taken from the rule books of actual railroads, along with sample train order messages. Railroad telegraphy is a lot more complicated than the ordinary Western Union office. Railroad messages are critical to safety; some messages are not complete until they have been repeated back to the sender, delivered to the addressees, read and signed by the addressees, and the signatures transmitted back to the sender. Most require multiple copies. A railroad operator would write with a stylus on thin, translucent paper, using double-sided carbon paper. Semaphore signals and the hooks for delivering messages to the crews of moving trains are described.

Wiring diagrams are given for an operating table connected to several circuits, and for a Morse repeater. There is a map of the New Mexico Division of AT&SF;, showing how various offices are connected to several line circuits. A selector system is described, which allows calling up a particular telegraph office without requiring operators to listen constantly for their office call letters. (Most circuits were "way" operated, meaning that several offices were connected by the same circuit and sounders at all responded to all the traffic on the line.)

The book is made all the more enjoyable with reproductions of advertisements that appeared in trade magazines: typewriters, telegraph instruments, Vibroplex keys, swivel chairs, shorthand instruction, and an attachment to enable a bicycle to be ridden on the railroad rail. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad was advertising for operators "able to copy Morse at 25 words per minute, and should be in good physical condition." as recently as 1954. Of considerable interest in this day when we hear so much about repetitive motion injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome, there is an advertisement for Telegrapher Liniment, which never fails where directions are followed implicitly. "Operator's Paralysis or Writer's Cramp comes like a thief in the night, and almost before you are aware of it you find it impossible to send any kind of readable Morse." Another advertisement is for the "Operator's Friend" a massage or exercise device which "prevents and cures telegrapher's paralysis and writer's cramp." The front cover reproduces an artist's illustration from the front cover of a 1904 telegrapher's magazine, showing a young man clad in white shirt, high collar, and vest working at his key while a uniformed trainman waits at his elbow for orders. There are two pages of railroad slang and two pages of bibliography.

The Song of the Open Wire

Today I am showcasing a fantastic website:

 The Song of the Open Wire

This website covers the history of wired telecommunications from 1843-2020.
Filled with articles and photos covering telegraphy, telephones, physical systems, personnel, memoirs, and has technical articles, historic photos and more.

This is a site well worth the perusal if you are interested in how these systems were built, maintained, and operated.

Below in its entirety is an article, the first in a series, on the analysis of telegraph lines, just to give you a taste for what this site contains!

Enjoy
73
Ciao
KJ

DC Transmission Line Modelling: Initial Studies on Telegraph Lines

By Tom Hagen

Introduction

This set of articles is intended to be an introduction to transmission lines and transmission line parameters.  I’m hoping that anyone interested in this topic will get a good intuitive feel on why open parallel wire communication systems are built the way they are.  This subject can be very technical if you go into the mathematical constructs.  It took a number of “first rank” physicists several decades in the 19th Century to get to the point of where the behavior of parallel open wire systems could be definitely modeled, characterized, engineered, and reliably operated in the real world.

I’ll add to this section of Doug’s website as time permits, so check back every few months and I hope to add one or two more articles after the first one.

Sections:

DC Transmission Line Modelling:

• Theory of capacitance and resistance
• Underground vs. overhead telegraph lines (early work)
• Undersea telegraph cables
• William Thomson’s (Lord Kelvin) efforts
• Thomson’s square law

Traveling Wave Transmission Line Modelling:

The work of the “Maxwellians”

• Comparison of DC and AC transmission line characteristics
• Distributed parameters of the transmission line
• Characteristic Impedance of the transmission line
• Travelling waves on transmission line
• Group delay problems on transmission line

Practical Examples:

• Distributed inductance to improve telegraph cable speed
• Loading coils on telephone lines

Open Wire Telephone Lines: Application of transmission line characteristics to open wire lines and technology.

Some Basics

The first inklings that long wires behave differently than short ones came about during he early development of the first telegraph systems in the early to middle Nineteenth Century.  It was observed that a wire acts one way when it is mounted overhead on poles and insulators and another when it was laid underground.  Experiments performed in the 1820s showed that a wire laid underground or in water passes electrical signals more slowly than a wire held overhead in air.  Michael Faraday (1791-1867), explained this effect as an effect of the electrical capacitance between the wire and the medium surrounding it.  Electrical capacitors were known to scientists by this time because the first electrical charge storage device, the Leyden Jar, was invented in the middle Eighteenth Century.

Referring to the below figures, an electrical capacitor is formed between the ire and the medium.  An electrical capacitor stores energy in the form of an electrical field between two conductors in close proximity.

A long wire buried in the ground can take on an electrical charge if you connect a voltage source such as a battery to it and a ground rod driven into the ground.  This is similar to giving a balloon a charge of static electricity when you rub it against a cloth.

Under the right conditions, i.e., if the wire is long enough and if the charge leakage to the earth is low enough, you can measure the retained charge that results in a measurable voltage between the wire and the Earth.

Fraser’s Calendar and Telegraphy Notebook 1872

 This is a real gem of a find from the Internet Archive courtesy of Alberta MTC member Marian Gibbard.

Fraser’s Calendar and Telegraphy Notebook from 1872 is fascinating look at the telegraph in British India in the latter half of the 19th C.

You can check out the Internet Archive copy here:
https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.02181/mode/2up

The book is a calendar/log book for those working for the Indian Telegraph which was under the control of the Colonial Government much as the Postal Telegraph was in Britain. However, what makes this book particularly interesting is the wealth of information on the state of telegraphy at that time, theory, practice, and practical information on running a telegraph line across such a diverse country as India.

 At 101 pages, a third of which is the log book with a page for each month of 1872 and 1873, there is an amazing amount of information here, weights and measures, calculating distances for mapping, strengths of wire, problems with escapes caused by damp spider webs, electrical theory, regulations, rates, legislation from the government etc.

There is also very practical and useful information ranging from how to load a cap and ball pistol in damp conditions to how to treat "strangles", a dangerous disease of horses Marian tells me.

Also of interest is the Morse Code being referenced. It is the Continental Code not our American/Railway code which, given that this was published in 1872 makes it one of the earlier references to that code that I have seen! Of course by 1872 the globe was crisscrossed with undersea cables most of which used that code .

Worth a perusal.

73
Ciao
Kevin Jepson
Editor

Modern Practice of the Electric Telegraph 1892

 Today your humble editor received a real treasure!

A paper copy of Pope's "Modern Practice of the Electric Telegraph" written in 1892.
This magnificent book is produced in paperback form by the Leopold Classic Library from a scanned copy, made by Google I believe.
I have a PDF of the scanned copy of the 1874 edition from the Internet Archive but nothing compares (at least to me) to being able to peruse such old documents in paper form.

 Inside this book is a fascinating look at the state of electricity and electrical apparatus at the end of the 19th Century. There is practical advise on the design, construction, and use of the telegraph. Also trouble shooting tips for when things don't work!

There are 185 illustrations in this book that help to show not only the principles that Pope is describing, but are also a pleasant snapshot of the state of the technology at the time. 

I have perused the PDF file quite a bit but I have to say that being able to flip back and forth and wander around the book in it's physical form really helps me to cement my understanding and gives me a great appreciation for the technicians and craftsmen who created these globe spanning systems even when their understanding of the fundamental science was primitive in the extreme.

 

There were several editions of this book. The Internet archive has at least three that I have found one from 1866, 1874 and one from 1899.

All the PDF copies are in good shape with the scanned illustrations being very clear.

The paper copy I have was produced from the best scanned copy that was available and has the same detailed and clear illustrations.

Of interest to those of us struggling to lear the code and improve our sending and copying is a short section at the very end of the book with "Hints for Learners". Definitely worth a gander.

I found this page, the last page of the text, to be particularly apropos to me and the Heritage Park's gang of happy amateurs.
I have included a photo of the page.

Enjoy
73

From the Chief Dispatcher Fall 2023

 MTC Calgary Fall 2023 Update

The Calgary “CG” Chapter of the Morse Telegraph Club has had a very busy summer!

Since May we have been slinging lightning and interpreting a day in the life of an agent operator twice a week, on Tuesday’s and Saturday’s, at Calgary’s Heritage Park. The park is fortunate to have four former Canadian Pacific Railway stations on the property, three of which are connected to the parks telegraph network. MTC Calgary has regularly occupied two of them, Laggan and Midnapore, practicing and perfecting our American Morse code skills and hooping up train orders to passing trains. We have also sent the names of countless guests up and down the wire and have put them in writing in telegrams. We have also shared stories about the local operator and his or her station as the centre of many towns across the prairies in days gone by.

Soon we will kick our efforts up a notch when Heritage Park’s annual Railway Days extravaganza happens once again. This year the event goes on Saturday, Sep 9 and Sunday, Sep 10 so mark your calendars! Not only will MTC Calgary be in Laggan and Midnapore stations, we will add Shepard station into the mix. MTC Calgary will also host a separate information booth which we will be sharing with members of the Victorian Society of Alberta. New this year will be a connection from this booth to the rest of the parks telegraph line, giving us a four station network. Once again members of Edmontons “MO” Chapter, all former railway telegraphers, will be joining us. It’s always a joy to stand back and watch the pros work the wires. 

 MTC Calgary also participated in two open houses at Champion Park this summer. The park is jointly owned by the Town of Okotoks and Foothills County. It has the former Canadian Pacific Railway station from Champion, Alberta (thus the name) on the property, along with a number of pieces of former CPR rolling stock. Chapter members staffed the station, slinging lightning and telling stories, as they do at Heritage Park. Two additional open houses are scheduled in September. The open houses provided a “proof of concept” opportunity for the Alberta Line Project. Using MorseKOB and the internet, Champion park was connected to the telegraph network at Heritage Park, and live Morse wire traffic was successfully exchanged between the stations at both places. It was a first for MTC Calgary and an exciting step for the larger line project.

This year has also seen the addition of three new members to the ranks of MTC Calgary, an encouraging sign for sure. To all those reading this who are not yet members of the Morse Telegraph Club, I encourage you to consider joining. Learning Morse code and sharing the science, art and history with folks is a lot of fun!

So, what does the fall and the New Year hold for us?

MTC Calgary will continue to be at Heritage Park demonstrating Morse telegraphy until Oct 7. While the park closes to the public that weekend, chapter members will meet on occasion to continue practicing until it gets too cold to do that. After that practice will continue online using MorseKOB and Zoom.

Having proven that the Alberta Line Project concept is viable, a formal rollout plan will be developed for 2024. If it goes well, every museum in southern Alberta that now has telegraph equipment sitting quietly collecting dust and rust, will be alive with the sounds of Morse code emitting from the sounder. I can see many road trips in our future!

I expect we will continue to occupy the stations at Heritage Park and may expand our efforts to more than 2 days per week. Feedback on the Champion Park open houses has been positive and hopefully the park will offer more public events throughout the year. MTC Calgary will be there too.

That’s all I have for now.

73

Ken Ashmead, President

MTC Calgary “CG” Chapter

After Action Report: First Active AlbertaMTCwire Link

Saturday August 12, 2023 marks an historic day for Landline Telegraphy in Alberta!

As part of the AlbertaMTC Line project a demonstration of the first long distance link between two museums with telegraph displays was inaugurated at 11:00 AM MDT with the simple message:

"WHAT AN HISTORIC DAY"

First Message!

The message was sent 35 km (22 mi) between the station in Champion Park South of Calgary and the landline telegraph network at Heritage Park in Calgary that links the Midnapore and Laggan stations. 

The Champion Park Telegraphers
Marilyn Maguire, Mia Salomakhin
Kevin Jepson

 The link culminates a summer of active landline experimentation and practice by members of the Calgary chapter (CG) of the Morse Telegraph club and the Heritage Park Morse Telegraph Club that started with our display at Supertrain back in April of this year.

The link utilized two of Chip Morgan's interfaces connected to small laptops hidden beneath the desks in the stations at Midnapore and Champion. The laptops running MorseKOB connected across the Internet to Wire 11 (the traditional chat wire) on our local KOBserver.

The inevitable hiccups were minor, and once set up, the link worked fairly well.

Using the link over the course of the day we encountered three kinds of issues. While not show stoppers, they were interesting to work through, and were related to issues with the connection at Heritage Park, equipment adjustments, and procedures.

The main connection issue was that the Heritage Park guest WiFi system blocks the port used by MorseKOB! I (Kevin) ended up using my old flip phone as a hot spot which worked fine until the battery died later in the afternoon.

The main equipment issue was also at Heritage Park and that was the adjustments of the sounder in Midnapore and the relay at Laggan. The current strength and signal speed on the line when using the KOB interface is different than what we normally have so that made some characters indistinct.

The procedure issues were interesting given the complexity of having THREE stations on the line. Key closer etiquette is a big one, call and response procedures are more important when it is not obvious where traffic is going to or coming from, and trying to handle three sets of guests around us in the stations at the same time can be tricky too!

The Champion Park Station

None of these issues are insurmountable and we are working on formalizing procedures and developing standard hardware setups to bring more permanent connectivity to the Railway and Historic Museums in Alberta and Western Canada.

A Historic first step indeed.

 Thanks to the members of the Calgary (CG) Chapter of the MTC and the Heritage Park MTC for their support and skills and to Heritage Park and Champion Park for letting us use their historic equipment to make this link!

 

The whole MTC crew at Champion
L to R
Ken Ashmead, Marilyn Maguire, Mia Salomakhin,
Kevin Jepson, Selwyn Morris

73
Ciao
Kevin Jepson
Instigator, "Wire-Chief", and acting Dispatcher for the AlbertaMTCwire Project.

Why the hoop for the engineer is so long!

 Imagine hooping to the engineer as one of these roared by in the dark!

One of these engines in action.

Insulators

 Found on FB

Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals both made arrowheads and spearheads out of Insulators. The telegraph companies got fed up with the knappers stealing their glass insulators that they would leave free ones piled up by the poles so they wouldn't have to repair the section taken down by the knappers.

Bird points made from them likewise exist but are fewer in number.

This style insulator, nicknamed "signal", is one of the most diversely colored styles produced by Hemingray from the 1880s to the 1940s . Colors exist in practically the entire spectrum! The example shown here is blue/green and you can see the point made by Ishi, at the museum is the same color Ishi, the last of the Yahi would Knapp anything he would find, often scavenging glass bottles from the University he worked at.

 

So invaluable was his lessons that his knapping style bore his name to the tool that’s used by Flint nappers today, the Ishi stick .

 

You can see here is one of the few photos of Ishi knapping and this one might be when he led a university expedition back to his native Yahi homeland in Northern California.

 

He would create points and give them away to children and anyone who visited him from 1911 until his death in 1916. The last authentic Ishi point sold at auction for a cool $27,000.00.

The First Nations Oneida born actor Graham Greene played him in the TV movie “the last of his tribe “

Last Associated Press Telegrapher

 

Editor's note: Aubrey passed away in June of 1999.

From the Internet Archive

 

The Oldest Surviving Associated Press Telegrapher

Aubrey Keel, W0AKL, 97 Years Young and Still Pounding Brass

by Neal McEwen, K5RW
Copyright © 1997,  Neal McEwen

---

I'd like for you to meet an acquaintance of mine. His name is Aubrey Keel. Aubrey was born in Indian Gap, Hamilton County, Texas in 1901. He became a telegraph operator during World War I for the Sante Fe Railroad. He practiced the profession of telegraphy in various capacities until the key was replaced by teletype machines in 1933 on Associated Press wires.

I met Aubrey at the local Morse Telegraph Club fall meeting. He was the most senior member by at least two decades. I was quite surprised to learn Aubrey was on the Internet; you may Email correspond with him at aekeel@juno.com.

The photo at the right shows Aubrey in front of the depot in Goldthwaite, Texas, where he learned telegraphy in 1917. The photo at the left shows Aubrey at the key making a tone tape for MTC members who could not attend the meeting.

Aubrey worked for the Sante Fe for a few years, then in 1926 he went to work for Associated Press, in Temple, Texas copying news stories. AP moved him to all the large cities in Texas, most of the time in Fort Worth. Besides press he copied stock market reports after the the close of the New York Stock Exchange. He entered lots of numbers and fractions on a stock market report form.

Aubrey recalls that press and market report operators had to be extremely proficient or they did not last long. He states that all the copying was done on a typewriter, or "mill" as they were called. A single error in market reports could cause an investor untold grief.

Press operators worked in close proximity to newspaper men. To improve the throughput of press traffic, the Phillips Code was used. Commonly used words were abbreviated and standardized in the Phillips Code book. (these little pocket sized books are very rare and prized by telegraphers and collectors alike.) For example, TD was Treasury Department, CHN was children, BOP was breach of promise. By using these abbreviations the effective speed could be significantly improved. Sending operators would send 30 to 35 words per minute. On the receiving end the operator would be typing 45 to 50 words a minute, as he typed the complete word, not the abbreviation.

Aubrey continued to work for the AP even after the last Morse circuit was closed. He worked in various other capacities and retired in 1966. He currently resides in Kansas City, where his last AP assignment took him. He enjoys ham radio, CW of course, and keeps in contact with friends via the airways and the Internet.

My thanks to Macalee Hime for the photos, and Tony Smith of Morsum Magnificat and Greg Raven for biographical information. For more information on Aubrey and the history of telegraphy at AP, see the February, 1994 issue of Morsum Magnificat. 

NYT News Wire recordings from 1951

 The newspapers got their stories across the wire via telegraph right up to the 1950s.

These audio recordings and transcriptions were created in 1951. 
I found the recordings created for the Morse Telegraph Club at the Internet Archive here:

https://archive.org/details/NewYorkTimesMorseWireLastDay1951

The speed these old time telegraphers could send and receive at was phenomenal, the speeds here are a steady 60 WPM!

To give you a feel for the speed here is the first message, a recording of a news story sent by telegraphers Jack Goulette and Ralph Cahall over The New York Times Morse wire to the Times telegraph office in New York, at a speed up to 60 words a minute. Dan Reeves was the receiver in New York.:

Message Link

A transcription of the message follows, converted from the Phillips code that the telegraphers were actually sending of course.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

1w.

No. FOUR ....LEND— LEASE....(WAGGONER)

    WASHINGTON, April 7~—-The United States has formally demanded
again, in the face of a flat refusal, that the Soviet Union return
some 670 ships this government made available to its Russian ally
under the Lend~Lease agreement of the last war.

The demand was made on the highest level, with a note from
Secretary of State Dean Acheson handed yesterday to Alexander S.
Panyushkin, the Soviet Ambassador. The message answered a Soviet note
of March 21 stating that the United States had agreed to sell the ships
and declining therefore to consider their return.

Also for a second time, Secretary Acheson asked that United
States representatives be allowed to examine the vessels described by
Moscow as "badly worn out and for the most part unfit for navigation
in the open sea."

The Secretary emphasized that “the title to these vessels
remains in the Government of the United States regardless of their
condition." He therefore repeated the request that this government
be permitted to "examine all unserviceable vessels in order to
determine their ultimate disposition.”

By citing various joint statements and agreements between
Washington and Moscow going back four years, Mr. Acheson denied that
the United States had “agreed” to sell the ships to the Soviet Union.

                (MORE)

                    Huston

                        --mm655pm--

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Imagine working at that speed all day!

To add to the fun, these expert telegraphers could receive the message and translate it from the Phillips code in their head and type it into the their Mills IN REAL TIME!!!

73
Ciao
KJ Editor
and AlbertaMTCwire Wire-Chief

AlbertaMTCwire Project What is needed?

 In this second post on the proposal for the #AlbertaMTCwire I will try to outline a rough series of phases for the project.

Originally posted to the Alberta-MTC@groups.io list back in Nov 2022.

There are two sides to this project:
A) The collection of information about what Museums have telegraph equipment, what equipment is displayed, and what interest there might be in coming along for the ride :-)
B) The process of creating the actual system to link all the displays.
Both apply to nearly every phase although some have an emphasis on one or the other.

What follows is a kind of...

<<<< Brainstorm of what is needed? >>>>

While these groupings are roughly in time order much of this can be done at the same time as interest, money, and people are available.  Don't let the length of this list daunt you, if this project starts to take off remember we are (re)building a system that has not existed for more than 50 years!

Here goes.
 
Identify Team members
  HPMTC?
    KJ, Ken, ?
  MTC?
  Museums?
  VSA?
  Others

Data collection
  Identify museums and contacts
  Reach out to contacts about project
  Increase contacts for Alberta-MTC groups.io

Proof of Concept for connectivity
  MorseKOB interfaces
    RaspberryPi interfaces
      Reach out to LandlineMorse and MoresKOB group members
    Laptop interfaces
      As above plus Chip Morgan's Elk Creek Enterprises
  KOBserver structure
    Wire nomenclature
    Private Wires
    Procedures
      Event operations
      Demo operations
    Test using an interface from HP to AlbertaMTCwire  
  Laptop turnkey design
  RaspberryPi turnkey design

Funding
  Determine costs for:
    Interfaces
    Travel
    Domain/Hosting
  Estimate timing
    POC
    Initial setups
    Roll out
    Expansion
  Grant Applications
    Heritage Alberta (by Feb 2023)
    Alberta Museums Association
    CN/CP?
    Others
  Publicity
    Dots and Dashes
    HP?
    MTC
    Railway groups
    Others?    

Administration
  Alberta MTC
    Committee
    Society?
  KOBserver
    Hosting
    Wire-chief group
    Open Key Problem
      Hardware failure
      Operator error
      Call out
    Segmenting wires
      By org
      By region
    Planned system wide events
      Railway Days
      Festivals
      DOY
      Field Days
    General connections
      Private Wires
      Through wires
      Demo wires
  Interface Mfg
    Commercial or Hobbyists    
  Training
    Practices
    Docent training
      Package for each installation
      Support line/group      
    
Implementation
  Guinea Pigs (HP + ? )
  Expansion
    Incremental based on funding or...
      Big Bang!
        If we are going to go go big!
    Beyond Alberta
    Beyond Canada

Documentation
  Website
  Mail list
  Training/Practice Resources  


Phew!
I will concentrate on each of the main sections as I do some more thinking on all this.
As always comments, suggestions, and expressions of interest, or brickbats, welcome :-)
73
Ciao
KJ

The meaning of "73"

Glen Zook, K9STH, posted this to the Heathkit mailing list:
http://www.signalharbor.com/73.html

Many amateurs already know that "73" is from what is known as the "Phillips Code", a series of numeric messages conceived for the purpose of cutting down transmission time on the old land telegraph systems when sending text that is basically the same.

In the April 1935 issue of QST on page 60 there is a short article on the origin of 73. This article was a summation of another article that appeared in the "December Bulletin from the Navy Department Office of the Chief of Naval Operations". That would be December of 1934.

The quotation from the Navy is as follows:
"It appears from a research of telegraph histories that in 1859 the telegraph people held a convention, and one of its features was a discussion as to the saving of 'line time'. A committee was appointed to devise a code to reduce standard expressions to symbols or figures. This committee worked out a figure code, from figure 1 to 92. Most of these figure symbols became obsolescent, but a few remain to this date, such as 4, which means "Where shall I go ahead?'. Figure 9 means 'wire', the wire chief being on the wire and that everyone should close their keys. Symbol 13 means 'I don't understand'; 22 is 'love and a kiss'; 30 means 'good night' or 'the end'. The symbol most often used now is 73, which means 'my compliments' and 92 is for the word 'deliver.' The other figures in between the forgoing have fallen into almost complete disuse."

One of the chief telegraphers of the Navy Department of Communications, a J. L. Bishop, quoted from memory the signals that were in effect in 1905:

1	Wait a minute
4	Where shall I start in message?
5	Have you anything for me?
9	Attention or clear the wire
13	I do not understand
22	Love and kisses
25	Busy on another circuit
30	Finished, the end-used mainly by press telegraphers
73	My compliments, or Best Regards
92	Deliver

Now days, 22 has become 88 (love and kisses). I don't know when this came about. 30 is still used in the newspaper and magazine business to indicate the end of a feature, story, or column. And, of course, 73 is still used by amateur radio operators to mean "best regards".

Making any of these numbers plural (73s, 88s, etc.) is incorrect since they are already plural. 73s would mean best regardses and 88s would mean love and kisseses. Those make no sense.

Anyway, the subject of where 73 came from comes up periodically and this article reinforces the "Phillips Code" origin.

Jim, N2EY, adds:

Some other related stuff:

Phillips Code "19" and "31" refer to train orders. They were so well known that the terms "19 order" and "31 order" were still in RR use in the 1970s, long after the telegraph was gone.

The abbreviation "es" for "and" derives from the Morse character "&". The prosign "SK" with the letters run together derives from the Morse "30".

The numeric code is a small part of the abbreviations outlined in the Phillips Code (developed by telegrapher Walter P. Phillips). Here are the numbers as referenced:

W I R E S I G N A L S

WIRE	Preference over everything except 95
1	Wait a moment
2	Important Business
3	What time is it?
4	Where shall I go ahead?
5	Have you business for me?
6	I am ready
7	Are you ready?
8	Close your key; circuit is busy
9	Close your key for priority business (Wire chief, dispatcher, etc)
10	Keep this circuit closed
12	Do you understand?
13	I understand
14	What is the weather?
15	For you and other to copy
17	Lightning here
18	What is the trouble?
19	Form 19 train order
21	Stop for a meal
22	Wire test
23	All copy
24	Repeat this back
25	Busy on another wire
26	Put on ground wire
27	Priority, very important
28	Do you get my writing?
29	Private, deliver in sealed envelope
30	No more (end)
31	Form 31 train order
32	I understand that I am to ...
33	Car report (Also, answer is paid for)
34	Message for all officers
35	You may use my signal to answer this
37	Diversion (Also, inform all interested)
39	Important, with priority on thru wire (Also, sleep-car report)
44	Answer promptly by wire
73	Best regards
88	Love and kisses
91	Superintendant's signal
92	Deliver promptly
93	Vice President and General Manager's signals
95	President's signal
134	Who is at the key?

Telegraph Tales

 

The Day the Power Failed by Stuart Davis

From the now defunct Telegraph Lore site.
Available on the Wayback Machine here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200218063219/http://www.telegraphlore.com/telegraph_tales/power_fail.html

The Day The Power Failed {From the December, 1978 issue of The Telegrapher, published by the late Dr. E. Stuart Davis at his National Telegraph Office in Union, N.J. Thanks to Bill Dunbar for providing this for use in Telegraph Lore.] 

A similar office in 1945

 It was 10 o'clock on a typical 1924 Thursday morning rush hour in the Postal Telegraph office at 84 State Street, Boston, Mass. The model 13s of the Morkrum mux sets to New York, Philadelphia and Chicago were pounding away, while the iron horse xtrs were gobbling up the slips almost as fast as the punchers could prepare them.

In the Morse department some 70 operators were moving the heavy file. The duplexes to Ford Motor, Montreal and Portland were "doubled." At the overflow that hit the traffic early in the morning, the clang and bang of the Lamson slingshot (conveyor) could scarcely be detected in the overall din.

Suddenly...the lights went out! The motors on the mux ground to a halt and the only sound in this big room was faint clicks from Morse relays on the Test Board. People glanced at each other in utter amazement, laughed and then relaxed while the Wire Chiefs were pounding away on the Bell wires to New York and Albany. "We lost our power!"

Meanwhile, Yours Truly was on his way to the power room in the basement. What a sight! A huge 1,800 ampere fuse had blown, taking with it a section of the marble switchboard and setting the connecting wires on fire. The basement was filled with the acrid fumes of burning insulation and it was obvious that power could not be restored for a long time.

Back on the fourth floor, Plant and T&R; men were arranging 200-ohm local sounders so that they could be used as main line instruments. KOB sets were brought and plugged into table jacks and one by one, lines that could be powered from distant terminals were coming back into service. As quickly as a circuit was made good, an operator was hard at work moving the delayed file.

Twelve single-Morse circuits were set up to New York, two to Chicago, and one each to Detroit and Buffalo. Anybody and everybody who could telegraph was pressed into service - including the Superintendent and Assistant Sup't. A hurry call was put out for the extra force - and to the retirees. By noon, more than a hundred operators were on duty.

At several desks, typewriters had been removed and pens and ink wells brought out. Now, the 80 year-old bonus men of a bygone era were turning out beautiful copy at 25-30 words per minute, such as only the artists of the turn of the century learned to do. By 1 p.m. all delays had been eliminated and traffic was flowing smoothly.

Uppermost in the mind of the Chief Operator was the question, "What shall I do about the night file?" On Thursdays, the average was about 7,000 messages plus an unpredictable amount of overflow press that was copied in the main office instead of the newspapers on Washington Street. The chief was concerned for the welfare of the elderly operators who'd responded to the emergency call and had been on duty since midmorning. Should they be kept on overtime, it was decided to pack several thousand "Reds" (Night Letters) into a leather bag which was then taken to South Station and placed in charge of an Express Messenger. New York was given the train number and made arrangements for it to be met at Grand Central Station. A similar course of action was followed for the traffic that moved via Chicago - except that a DCM was given a Pullman ticket aboard the "Wolverine," due in CH at 9 a.m.

As suddenly as it had been lost, power was restored, soon after 4 p.m. A great cheer went up! Now the mux operators who had been demoted to the only tasks they could perform around an all-Morse office - that of "check clerks" - were back in business, and they made those old Perforators sound like machine guns!

With normality restored there was a gathering of top brass in the T&R; department. Each person had their own version of the day to relate. One Wire Chief who wrote in a very tiny hand was asked, "How many words can you put on a blank?" He didn't know, but replied, "I can copy a ten-word message in the space of a postage stamp." Some bragged of how many words they could stay behind the sender, and so it went.

Finally Wire Chief spoke up: "I'm not the fastest operator around here, but I can copy a message in French with one hand and one in English with the other at the same time."

The Chief Operator went out in the traffic department and returned with a message from the Montreal Duplex in French, and one in English. The Wire Chief was provided with pencils and pads. The two messages were sent at usual hand key speeds. He made perfect copy of both! Amid cheers and slaps on the back, the Superintendent sent out for hamburgers and near-beer (Prohibition, you know) and the rest of us got back to work.

As the Old Timers told us young squirts, "We handled the business about as fast as the machines, and we were a lot more reliable."

"After Action Report" Supertrain 2023

 The first Supertrain since the "Pandemic Hiatus" was held on April 15 and 16th and was a great success with over 11500 people attending across the two days!

The Calgary "CG" chapter of the Morse Telegraph club created a four station telegraph network that spanned almost 200'. The line connected our display to telegraph installations for three museums that had displays at the show. This network was the first ever live telegraphy display at Supertrain.

The four stations on the line were, from West to East:
HP  Heritage Park  from Calgary AB
WA  Alberta Central Railway Museum from Wetaskiwin AB
CG  Calgary Chapter MTC
BY  Revelstoke Railway Museum from Revelstoke BC
 
Each station on the line consisted of a relay, key, and local sounder with battery.  The line was a 16 Ga copper two conductor cable with the stations spliced into one conductor with the other being the ground return. Power for the line was supplied by a mains connected variable power supply connected to the display in our MTC booth

Your editor
at the MTC Calgary Booth

The total resistance of the circuit was close to 550 Ohms with an additional 500 Ohms added to bring the current down to 46 mA with a voltage from the power supply of 40 V. This worked very well and all the relays were snappy once adjusted on the actual line. However when Bill Wilson of the Alberta Central Museum added his bug the relays could not keep up and he couldn't send. Bumping the voltage up just past 50 V and adjusting the relays a bit allowed the bug to send at full speed and be received at all the stations.

We did some manual sending back and forth from the stations, but the show was very noisy and, at our current skill level, it was too difficult to follow. To keep things moving I had a laptop running MorseKOB, connected to the MTC display with one of Chip Morgan's interfaces, spooling out the first chapter of The Hobbit from our KOBserver. The laptop was connected to the Internet via tethering through my cellphone. This had the advantage of permitting us to demo sending at any of the stations because the KOBserver will back off when the key is opened. One issue was that with the overloaded cell network at the show sometimes the KOBserver would take a bit longer to realize the key was open. Running the KOBserver locally on the laptop alleviated that issue.

I walked around to several other groups with my KOB connected to our KOBserver via another cellphone tether and discussed our proposed Alberta MTC Museum link and had a lot of interest. Once our "proof of concept" is running we will be able to get many more museums and groups connected up in Alberta and Western Canada and potentially as far away as Southern Ontario!

The steady click/clacking of the telegraph sounders attracted a lot of interest from the attendees providing us an excellent opportunity to describe how landline telegraphy works, its history, and use in Railway Operations. The other museums said the same thing, that the sound of the active displays attracted people to their booths.

It also attracted many "old timers" who regaled us with tales of their days as station operators.

All in all a very successful 2023 Supertrain!

Looking forward to more opportunities to demonstrate our skills and show how Landline Telegraphy works at future events.

Calgary "CG" Chapter MTC Members.

L to R
Larry Isenor, Ken Ashmead, Kevin Jepson

L to R
Marilyn Maguire, Joanne Johnson
Maureen McVeigh, Heather Davis

 

The Calgary Chapter Display

The crowds were big!

Lego Trains were a popular spot.

 

First Canadian Collectors Club presentation March 13 2023

 At the monthly meeting of the first Canadian Collectors Club on March 13, 2023, the Calgary “CG” Chapter of the Morse Telegraph Club gave a presentation titled “MORSE TELEGRAPHY AND WHAT IT MEANS TO CANADIAN COLLECTORS”.

Member Kevin Jepson took centre stage and delivered an entertaining and informative talk on Morse. He was followed by Mary Kuipers-Morris, wife of member Selwyn Morris, who gave an equally informative talk about her Morse-related hobby; researching, collecting and displaying glass and porcelain insulators.

The talks concluded with Kevin revealing our want/wish list of telegraph items, figuring that a group of collecting bloodhounds would be much better equipped to find some of the things we are looking for. It was followed by a lively question and answer session.

Kevin Jepson
I took my telegraph office display and set it up with a bunch of telegraph equipment, a couple of CPR train order hoops, and some CPR paperwork. The display was working as a local circuit and was connected via my laptop to our local KOBserver so it would be actively receiving wire traffic during my presentation on the history of the telegraph. A brief version of my presentation follows.

“From the time that the recently bereaved painter Samuel Finley Breese Morse invented the telegraph, and its iconic Morse code in the 1840s, until it was finally replaced in the late 1960s, the telegraph was history's greatest single advancement in communications. Often labelled as the "Victorian Internet", this very simple and elegant electromagnetic system completely changed the world of business, news, politics, and general communications over long distances. For the first time information and messages could be sent hundreds of miles in seconds instead of weeks or months. The first demonstration line, which ran from Washington to Baltimore, carried its first message on May 24 1844. Sent by Morse himself, it was simply "What hath God wrought", or more accurately, "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" since all Morse code messages are uppercase, there being no code for shift. By the time of the American Civil War 20 years later there were more than 30,000 miles of telegraph lines including one, completed in 1861, that crossed the continent to California. Nothing in the history of the world has had such a major impact on communications, including the advent of the Internet in our own time.

"Railroads used the telegraph as a way to control the train traffic on their tracks. Single tracks with trains going both ways are tricky to control. The near instantaneous communication between dispatcher and telegraph operators all along the line was critical to the safe operation of the railroads. In Canada the telegraph was always associated with the railroad. The first telegraph into Western Canada was built in the 1870s, years before the railroad, and followed the original proposed route from Winnipeg to Leduc. When the CPR was finally completed in 1885 it was given a monopoly on the telegraph system that largely paralleled its tracks, spanning the vast reaches of Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

"It is fitting therefore that the last known telegraph message in Canada was sent on the CPR telegraph system in 1973 by a CPR telegraph operator in Nanaimo BC. His message was simply "THIS IS THE LAST TELEGRAPH MESSAGE ON THE CPR SYSTEM”, and then he shut it down.”

Mary Kuipers-Morris
“Insulators emerged in the 1840’s with the invention of the telegraph. The first insulators were used by Samuel Morse on the line from Baltimore to Washington. The early insulators were made of glass and were thread-less. The need for glass insulators increased with invention of the telephone in 1876. They were used as a medium to attach wires to poles but they also prevented current loss during transmission and prevented lightning strikes. Both glass and porcelain were used but glass was less expensive. The height of glass making was from 1875 to 1930 with major glass manufacturing plants in California and Colorado. Most manufacturers also made glass dishes, jars, bottles, etc. The most common insulators were made by Armstrong, Brookfield, Dominion, Hemingray and Pyrex.

"Insulators are described or categorized according to their CD (Consolidated Design) numbers. The numbering system is used by collectors to identify design, style and use. The definitive reference guide is North American Glass Insulators by Donald R. Briel. The book breaks down insulators by design, colour variations, base drip points (sharp, round, smooth), anomalies (incorrect spelling, manufacturing date), etc. Many manufacturers used the same design mold so the CD number remains the same.

"Colours varied with manufacturers using whatever raw materials they had on hand or were readily available. Colour has no significance in the function of the insulators but is highly significant to collectors. While the most common colour is aqua or variations of aqua, clear, green, blue, purple and amber were also used. Collectors are drawn to anything unusual such as colour shading, air bubbles, streaks, special embossing, etc.

"Prices vary widely with the common or readily available insulators costing $2 to $20 with less common ones selling around $100. Price increases with rarity or unusual markings or colours. Per Briel, the most expensive, sought after insulator is a CD 735 Chester N.Y. Green worth $10,000 to $15,000.”