Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Telegraph History....Again! Message-ID:Date: 25 Sep 89 15:30:37 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: "Marc T. Kaufman" Organization: Stanford University, Computer Science Dept. Lines: 19 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 411, message 7 of 8 In article Gabe Wiener 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]