Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: gabe@sirius.ctr.columbia.edu (Gabe Wiener) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Telegraph History....Again! Message-ID:Date: 25 Sep 89 02:54:59 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: Gabe Wiener Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research Lines: 32 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 405, message 2 of 5 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."