Category Archives: Telegraph history

1920 Marconigrams

A hundred years ago, if you wanted to send a message to Europe fast, you would use the WWW–that is, RCA’s World Wide Wireless service. You could send Marconigrams at various rates, depending on country. Messages to England were 17 cents a word, up to 36 cents per word to Germany.

You could call and have a uniformed messenger pick up your message, or you could take it in person. Three locations in Manhattan were open 8 AM to 8 PM. The location at 64 Broad Street was always open.

This ad appeared in the New York Herald a hundred years ago today, December 23, 1920.

1919 Forest Service Heliograph

One hundred years ago, the forest ranger shown here is acting as “lookout man” atop some Western peak. As he watches for forest fires, he has at his disposal detailed maps of the area, as well as two means of communication. When he spots a fire, he can call in the bearing to headquarters on the telephone. To communicate with other spotters in areas too remote for a phone, he has the heliograph. On clear sunny days, the device had a range of up to 45 miles.

The first Forest Service heliograph units had originated with the Army Signal Corps, but more compact units suited to forest fire fighting were procured. Seven rangers were initially trained. Even though they had no prior knowledge, they became proficient operators in a very short time.

While Morse Code could be used, it was found that the Myer Code, shown below, was more reliable for visual signaling. The letter P, for example, is 1211. The one indicates a long flash, and the 2 indicates two short flashes.

The top photo appeared in the November 1919 issue of Electrical Experimenter. More details of the system can be found in a 1914 Forest Service Publication, Systematic Fire Protection in the California Forests. The heliograph instrument consisted of a mirror, which was oriented so that it reflected the sun on the receiving station. A shutter in front of the mirror was used to key the beam on and off. To call another station, the sending station would send a quick succession of flashes until acknowledged. Then, each station would turn on a steady flash to make adjustments. When the mirrors were in place, the sending station would proceed with its message. The average speed of transmission was found to be about four words per minute.

Plans for a simple heliograph can be found at an earlier post.

Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service

Shown here, in the September 1944 issue of Manitoba Calling, the program guide of CKY Winnipeg, are two “Wrens” of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service. Stationed atop the signal tower over Halifax harbor, these women did the job of Naval signalmen in visual signal work. They flashed and received messages to and from ships and relayed them to the Navy shore offices. The magazine noted that the tools of their trade were projection lamps, signal flags, binoculars, telescopes, telephone, and radio telephones.

The magazine noted that while nothing could compensate for the horror and destruction of war, there were some good results. One of those was the fact that women had been given the opportunity to serve Canada in a variety of jobs with few openings in peace time.

For another look at visual signalling methods, see our earlier post.

175th Anniversary of Electric Telegraph

Morse sending message from Capitol. Wikipedia image.

Today marks the 175th anniversary of the first use of the electric telegraph on May 24, 1844, a message sent between Washington and Baltimore by Samuel F.B. Morse.

As shown by the newspaper clipping to the left, the device was in immediate commercial use. The article appeared in the Whig Standard on May 28, 1844.

The 38-mile line was authorized by Congress in 1843, and $30,000 was appropriated. It was completed by May 1, 1944, and a demonstration took place that day. This is the demonstration apparently being discussed in this article, since the May 1 demonstration included sending the news of the Whig Party’s nomination of Henry Clay for President. The author of that article announces in astonishment that “those attending at the Capitol may almost be said to have been in attendance at all the Conventions in Baltimore!”

Morse in 1857. Wikipedia photo.

The line officially opened on May 24, 1844, with Morse in the Capitol building sending the words “what hath God wrought” to Baltimore. Within the next six years, 12,000 miles of line were placed.

Interestingly, the word “telegraph” was already firmly ingrained in the English language. Morse’s invention might have been the first electric telegraph, but other devices for sending signals over a long distance already existed. For example, I have transcribed the 1797 Encylopaedia Britannica article on the telegraph, which describes some of the pre-electric telegraphs.

Most readers are undoubtedly aware of the current uses of Morse Code, even 175 years after its first use. An interesting article at Smithsonian.com explains some of them.

The International Morse Code is standardized by the International Telecommunications Union. The most recent addition to the code is the addition of the @ sign ( .– – .– .) in 2002.

Historical marker along path of Washington-Baltimore line. Wikipedia photo.

1944 Tape-Operated Code Sender

The gentleman shown here is practicing copying Morse Code that the woman is literally cranking out for him, thanks to this automated code sender from the February 1944 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Today, it’s a relatively trivial matter for a computer to generate code, such as with this online code generator. But 75 years ago, saving a message for later replay probably involved paper tape. This machine allowed you to play such tapes, using a contact made of distributor points from a car. The tape could be prepared (using ticker tape) with a hole punch, or you could use commercially available tapes (probably Instructograph tapes).

The device could be powered with a crank, or with a sewing machine motor controlled by a rheostat.

1918 Combination Telegraph Sounder/Key

This ad from the August 1918 issue of Electrical Experimenter magazine shows an interesting code practice set which appears to be a combination key and sounder, for the low price of 25 cents (plus six cents for the catalog the company wants to get in as many hands as possible.

The ad contains the copy: “Impossible–you say. Quite so.” I’m still not sure exactly how it’s supposed to work. My best guess is that there’s another contact not visible behind the front binding post, and the key is wired in series with the coil. The sounder and the key would have to be able to move independently, which I guess is possible if it’s flexible enough and the center mount is firmly attached. Hooked to a battery, the sounder would then click whenever the key is depressed.

According to the ad, two such units can be connected, with a range of up to six blocks. This would require the key to be shorted out, and there doesn’t appear to be a convenient way of doing that, other than perhaps just holding down the key while receiving.

The ad reminds readers that telegraph operators are scarce, and that Uncle Sam needed thousands. For the entrepreneurially minded young men, the ad points out that boys are ordering 6-25 of them and selling them to their friends like hot cakes for 30-40 cents.

Even though the sounder would be most useful for learning American Morse for use on a landline telegraph, the text around the key is in International Morse, and reads: EICO NY.

1918 Train Dispatching

A century ago, with much of the labor force off to war, American industry turned to women to fill many jobs traditionally held by their male counterparts. Shown here is one of the hundreds of young women being trained to be train dispatchers. The article, in the April 1918 issue of Electrical Experimenter, pointed out that the job was exacting, and in the real world, mistakes could easily mean death or dismemberment. Therefore, the women were trained on the model railroad shown here, before being unleashed on the real rails. The dispatcher would set signals and switches, with the model trains responding.

Midwest Blizzard of 1949

Downtown Rapid City after the blizzard. Photo by the Rapid City Journal.

Downtown Rapid City. National Weather Service/Rapid City Journal.

As I write this, snow is once again forecast for my region. Since the calendar says that it’s the first day of spring, it’s likely that the snow will be little more than a temporary inconvenience.

But I was recently reminded that a snowstorm wasn’t always just a minor inconvenience, and I learned about one of the Midwest’s largest winter storms ever, the blizzard of January 2-5, 1949.

Ida McNeil, KGFX.

I don’t think I had ever heard about this storm until I had a comment on my post about KGFX, a one-woman broadcast station run out of the home of Ida McNeil in Pierre, SD. As I mentioned in the previous post, Mrs. McNeil did take commercial advertising, but she viewed the station mostly as a public service. And this is borne out from the story of the 1949 blizzard shared by reader Dwight Small:

I well remember her broadcasting during the blizzard of 1949. We were completely snowbound on the former Hugh Jaynes ranch 15 miles NNW of Pierre. She was our only window to the outside world for at least a couple of weeks. We had no electricity but the battery powered radio lasted sustained our spirits. We learned from her that there were hundreds of others in the same boat.

I did some research about the storm, and it appears that many were, indeed, in the same boat. The winter of 1948-49 was severe in many respects, but it delivered it’s biggest punch to the northern plains in the early days of January, 1949.

The April, 1949, issue of QST describes its entry to South Dakota:

Things began on the morning of January 3rd in South Dakota, when KOTA, Rapid City’s broadcaster, let loose with the first hint that the impending storm was to be of record-breaking proportions. Unfortunately many ranchers, traveling people and others failed to hear the broadcast warnings and were totally unprepared for what was to come. It started coming down on the 3rd, and continued until about noon on the 5th. The actual snowfall was not of record-breaking proportions, but high winds, sometimes in gusts of 65 to 70 miles per hour, piled the snow into mountainous drifts, oftentimes 30 to 50 feet deep.

Many others found themselves isolated by the storm. In 2013, the Rapid City Journal carried the reminiscence of schoolteacher Grace Roberts, who was stranded at her post in Creighton, a small town about 25 miles north of Wall. She and her four-year-old daughter made it to school, but then found themselves trapped there for 38 days. The road to the school was plowed a few times, but was quickly covered over with snow.

She reminisced in 2013 that she ate a lot of canned soup, but managed due to the kindness of neighbors, the closest of whom was a mile away. The neighbor would ride over on horseback, “and when his wife baked bread he’d bring us some bread or when he milked a cow, he would bring some milk.”

The school had a small bed, and was well stocked with coal. They also had a battery radio, and would listen occasionally, but mostly passed the time by talking and reading.

Another survivor, Everett Follette of Sturgis, like many South Dakotans, had a phone line that kept working through the storm and served as the lifeline. Interestingly, though, Follette recounted in 2009 that the family also had a battery-powered radio, “but the only station they could tune in came from Bismarck, N.D.”

Battery radio of the era, a Philco 41-841.

The family used as much milk and cream as they could from their dairy farm, but with roads impassible, they had to dump the excess. Eventually, the Sturgis creamery called about the availability of milk, and made a deal to follow a military snowblower. When neighbors learned that the truck was coming, they quickly phoned the grocery store in Sturgis to have groceries delivered.

As might be expected, hams sprang to action to deal with the communications needs of the region, as detailed in the April 1949 issue of QST. In South Dakota, when the snow first started coming down, W0ADJ and W0CZQ made arrangments with the Air Force base to maintain contact with the base at Colorado Springs, “just in case.” Hams also played a role in coordinating the massive air operations after the storm had passed. Planes were used to search for survivors and drop supplies for both humans and livestock.

Broadcast stations advised incommunicado ranchers of which marks to make in the snow to request drops of feed and other supplies.

The railroad plow which bored through on the North Western line from Pierre east of Rapid City after dynamite as used to loosen ice-encrusted snow. Photo courtesy of the Rapid City Journal.

One of the most dramatic uses of amateur radio took place in Ogallala, NE, a town of about 3000 in western Nebraska. A train was stalled in the snow west of town, and a major transcontinental highway was blocked. State snowplows managed to break through, and led a mile-long convoy of cars into town. Suddenly, the town of 3000 was pressed into service to shelter, feed, and supply communications for an additional 2000 people.

The communications duties fell upon W0LOD, the town’s only ham, whose station was limited to running 50 watts with a single 807, and only on 40 meters. Despite his modest station, “all around W0LOD–north, south, east and west–were hams with sensitive receivers, and perhaps greater power, and, as the skip ebbed and flowed he was able to sit at his operating position handling emergency traffic in unbelievable quantity much as he had been accustomed to handle routine traffic night after night. It was a 48-hour session at the key, but no heroics, no frantic ‘QRRR’–just a traffic man doing that which he likes best.”

The April 1949 QST article tells of other storms that winter, many of which overlapped each other. For example, when railroad telegraph lines went down, hams were called upon to assist the railroads in keeping te trains running. In Kansas, W0EQD didn’t even realize that his town had been cut off from the outside world. The power was out, so he got his station running on the emergency generator and checked into the Kansas Phone Net, which had traffic waiting for the phone company. As soon as he delivered the message and local officials found out he was on the air, he was kept busy for the next 48 hours as his town’s only communications facility.

Missouri was hard hit by an ice storm on January 11, and many commercial telegraph lines were down. Western Union called on hams to deliver both company and weather bureau messages. The cartoon below appeared in the Springfield (Mo.) News & Leader, and was reprinted in QST. It shows a ham being scoffed for spending so much time and money to take part in a “kid’s hobby” only to talk to people he didn’t even know. But in the next panel, after the ice hits, the same man is begging the ham to get news of his mother who was cut off from the outside world.

References

It’s ‘Going Down in History”: The Blizzards of 1949. South Dakota History Vol. 29, p. 263 (1999).

Albert E. Hayes, Jr., W1IIN, Deep Freeze, QST, Apr. 1949, p. 35.

1977 Soviet Youth Telegraph, With Bonus Machine Gun & Radio

At first glance, this appears to be an American Boy Scout working on his signaling. But it’s not. It’s actually his Soviet counterpart, a Young Pioneer getting the message through. The image is from the cover of a 1977 issue of Masterok magazine, a Soviet journal designed to instill in middle school age children the necessary skills for labor education.

This issue seems to focus on communications skills, and for the beginners, it describes how to make this tin-can telephone, albeit a rather advanced version of the old staple:

It moves next to Morse signaling, showing how to make this buzzer set:

Of course, the young comrades need something to communicate about, so the magazine shows them how to make this realistic looking machine gun, perfect for taking out invading capitalist imperialists:

After all that excitement in the field, the Pioneers can relax by listening to the radio after building this three-transistor TRF set. It employs permeability tuning, one stage of RF amplification, and two audio stages for good headphone volume.

1918 Ground Current Telegraph

With civilian radio (both transmitting and receiving) shut down for the duration of the war, hams a hundred years ago still had a desire to engage in communications. As we’ve seen prevsiously (here, here, here and here), one method of communicating without the use of radio waves is a ground-conduction telegraph. And a hundred years ago this month, the January 1918 issue of Popular Science showed how to do it.

The magazine noted that “because the Government, for good and sufficient reasons, has put a ban on amateur wireless stations, it does not follow that all your activities must stop.” It noted that communicating by ground wireless was “almost as interesting” as actual radio and was “permitted by the Government, since high tension apparatus need not be used, at least not in their normal capacities.”

While the magazine noted that the Allies were apparently not using this type of communication, “for all we know the Germans may be using it now,” and that it had a potential range of forty miles, and perhaps more through salt water. (The 40 mile estimate seems extremely optimistic, but I can’t say I’ve ever tried it.)

In addition to the basic circuit shown above, the magazine also showed this more advanced setup, which permitted full break-in operation (with the addition of a normally-closed contact to the key). It looks just slightly dangerous, and would probably trip a modern ground fault interrupter. It doesn’t appear to send any signal over the power lines, but does use the electric service ground as one of the two connections.

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