Category Archives: Telegraph history

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.

Patrick Vincent Coleman, 1872 – 1917

Vince Coleman. Wikipedia photo.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, December 6, 1917. We remember it as a great act of heroism by a telegrapher, train dispatcher Vince Coleman.

Only known photograph of the blast, probably taken about 15 seconds after detonation from about one mile away. Wikipedia photo.

The 1917 explosion in Halifax harbor killed approximately 2000 people and injured 9000 more. It represented the largest man-made explosion prior to the development of nuclear weapons, and released the equivalent of 2.9 kilotons of TNT.

It was the result of a collision between the SS Mont-Blanc, a French freighter carrying high explosives, with the Norwegian vessel SS IMO. The Imo was en route to New York to take on relief supplies for Belgium. The ship was given clearance to leave the harbor on December 5, but had been delayed due to fueling. By the time the ship had taken on fuel, the submarine nets were up for the night, and the ship had to wait.

The Mont-Blanc had arrived from New York the night of December 5 and was heavily loaded with explosives. The ship intended to join a convoy, but was also arrived too late to enter the harbor due to the submarine nets.

When the nets were lowered the next morning, the ships passed in a strait called the Narrows. At 8:45 AM, the two ships collided. While damage was not severe, barrels of Benzol broke open and flooded the hold. Sparks ignited the vapors, and a fire started at the water line. As the crew of the Mont-Blanc frantically boarded their lifeboats, they shouted warnings that the ship was about to explode.

At 9:04, the ship exploded, with a cloud of smoke rising over 11,000 feet. The shock wave was felt over 129 miles away, and an area of over 400 acres was completely destroyed. A 50-foot tsunami hit Halifax.

Halifax ruins. Wikipedia photo.

Vince Coleman, 45, was a dispatcher for the Canadian Government Railways. He, along with Chief Clerk William Lovett, was working at the Richmond station, only a few hundred feet from the pier. He was responsible for controlling trains along the main line into Halifax.

Minutes after the fire started, a sailor had been rushed ashore to warn people of the ship’s cargo. The men in the station began to rush out of the building, but Coleman hurried back to send a warning message to the other stations down the line. In particular, Coleman was aware that a passenger train was due, and that its path would take it right to the explosion. He sent the following message to all of the other stations down the line:

HOLD UP THE TRAIN. AMMUNITION SHIP AFIRE IN HARBOR MAKING FOR PIER 6 AND WILL EXPLODE. GUESS THIS WILL BE MY LAST MESSAGE. GOOD-BYE BOYS.

The message was heeded. The passenger train, with 300 aboard, was halted at Rockingham station, about 4 miles from the downtown terminal. It is almost certain the Coleman’s message saved the lives of those 300 passengers. In addition, the message, which was received by numerous other stations, along with the line then going silent, gave news of what had happened, allowing relief supplies to be immediately sent to Halifax.

This was critical, since a winter storm soon delayed further relief supplies. The passengers and crew of the first arriving trains began rendering assistance, but the first dedicated relief train was udnerway by 10:00 AM, and arrived by noon.

The next day, Halifax was blanketed by 16 inches of snow, delaying other relief trains from Canada and the United States. Coleman’s heroic message ensured that relief was on the way while there was still time to save hundreds of lives.

This short video dramatizes Coleman’s heroism:

It also features in the 2007 miniseries “Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion”, which is available on Amazon.

References

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1942 Army Signal Corps Recruiting

This recruiting ad for the U.S. Army Signal Corps appeared in Popular Mechanics 75 years ago this month, November 1942. It noted that this was a radio war, and that the nerve center of the army needed skilled hands. It suggested a number of opportunities to serve.

Physically fit men ages 18 to 45 were eligible for direct enlistment in the Signal Corps Enlisted Reserve. Those with experience as a licensed radio operator, a trained repairman, or active telephone or telegraph worker would qualify for active duty at once with pay of up to $138 per month, plus board, shelter, and uniforms.

Those without direct experience but “skilled with tools” would qualify for training and ordered to active duty after completing the course.

Degreed electrical engineers, as well as junior and seniors in EE programs, would be eligible for commission.

Young men over 16 having an ability with tools would be eligible for immediate training, with pay of not less than $1020 per year. Even those with a minor physical handicap could find a place to serve.

Buzzer Converted to Telegraph Sounder

This illustration appeared in Popular Mechanics a hundred years ago this month, September 1917, and illustrates a clever solution to a problem that no longer exists. It shows a simple way to convert a buzzer into a telegraph sounder.

At first blush, it seems rather obvious how to use a buzzer as a telegraph: Simply hook it up, as shown, in series with the key and the battery. If that’s how it were hooked up, that’s how I, or just about anyone who knows Morse Code these days, would be able to listen with ease.

It took me a few minutes to realize what was going on. This was a simple way to create a sounder that would sound like a landline telegraph. That kind of telegraph didn’t produce a continuous tone, as Morse Code does when sent by radio. Instead, it produces clicks and clacks as the arm of the sounder hits the coil. The landline telegrapher is listening for those clicks and clacks, the same way that I would be listening to the buzz of the buzzer. But the buzzing would be just as incomprehensible to the landline telegrapher, just as the clicks and clacks would be incomprehensible to me. The code being used is very similar (but not quite identical, since American telegraphers used American Morse, while radio operators use International Morse Code). But the medium being used is very different.

The secret of the diagram above is the wire run from point C to point F. Normally, a buzzer makes noise because the coil energizes and pulls the arm down. But in the process, it breaks the electrical contact between the arm and point C. This causes the coil to de-energize, and the arm swings back. When it gets back in position, the coil is powered up again, and the cycle repeats. This happens fast enough that a buzzing sound is produced.

In this diagram, the vibrator contact is shorted out. So when the arm is pulled toward the coil, it stays there until the key is released, just as would happen in a landline telegraph sounder. So instead of buzzing, the buzzer now clicks and clacks, and the aspiring landline telegrapher can use the modified buzzer to practice the trade.

According to the magazine, the idea was sent in by one Clarence F. Kramer of Lebanon, Indiana. Interestingly, Mr. Kramer apparently knew both versions of the code, since he was also a radio amateur. He is listed in the 1921-23 call books as being licensed as 9AOB, with an address of 414 E. Pearl St., Lebanon, Indiana. The April 1923 issue of Wireless Age shows that he pulled in, on a crystal set, 27 different broadcast stations, his best DX being 825 miles, WBAP in Ft. Worth, Texas. Another one of the stations he pulled in was WLAG in Minneapolis, the forerunner of WCCO. In the December 30, 1925 issue of the Indianapolis Star, he describes himself as an “ardent radio bug.”

He also appears to have been a Boy Scout, since one Clarence Kramer of Indiana, with various interests including wireless and telegraphy had a penpal request in the January 1915 issue of Boys’ Life magazine. While it could be another person with the same name, one Clarence F. Kramer was an engineer with Ford, holding a number of patents. If he went to work for Ford, then he is probably the Clarence Frank Kramer who died in Michigan in 1994 at the age of 92.

1917 Wireless Telegraph

We’ve carried plans for other wireless telegraphs and telephones that relied upon ground conductivity, and here’s another one that comes from a hundred years ago this month, in the July 1917 issue of Electrical Experimenter.

This one is a bit mysterious for a couple of reasons. First of all, the receiver appears to contain a crystal detector wired in series. (At least I think that’s what the component to the left of the capacitor is.) Admittedly, I haven’t tried making one of these, but I can’t really see the purpose of it, since the signal transmitted through the ground is essentially an AF signal that the headphones would be able to pick up.

Second, I can’t see any real advantage in burying one of the ground electrodes so deep (10 feet). Doing so does achieve 9 feet of separation between the two grounds, and this separation is necessary. But it seems to me that this could be accomplished much more easily by placing both grounds near the surface, separated horizontally. This would avoid the necessity of having to dig a 10 foot hole, which seems like a lot of work.

Finally, I can’t think of any good reason for making one electrode copper and the other zinc.

The accompanying text doesn’t answer any of these mysteries. The diagram was submitted by a reader, one O.M. Warren of Detroit, MI, who submitted it along with the question, “would it be possible to use the following scheme to telegraph a distance of a block or two?”

The editors answered merely: “Yes. You will have no trouble in transmitting considerably more than the distance you mention.” But they don’t even hint that Mr. Warren needn’t bother digging the two ten foot holes.

The reader also asked whether a tuning coil or loose coupler should be used, but the editors did say that they should not be used, since “it is impossible to tune any distant signal with this ground telegraph system, speaking generally.”

But since radio transmission or reception were forbidden during the war, Mr. Warren would be able to communicate. Let’s hope that nobody told him his ten foot holes were unnecessary.

1917 Boys’ Life: Signaling and Beans

A hundred years ago this month, both the front and back cover of the June 1917 issue of Boys’ Life magazine featured signaling methods. In the cover art shown above (with no attribution to the artist that I could find), a Scout is shown relaying a semaphore message to a distant point.

Not to be outdone, the back cover, an ad for Colgate toothpaste, used International Morse Code to proclaim the messsage, “I BRING GOOD TEETH GOOD HEALTH.” Since the nation was at war, the ad also reminded Scouts “how soldiers and sailors benefit from good teeth, and that they must have them to pass the physical examination.”

But the wartime service promoted by most of the magazine was the Scout’s duty to feed the nation and the troops.

It proclaimed that “no organization in the United States acted more promptly than the Boy Scouts of America when Congress declared, on April 5th, that a state of war existed between our country and Germany. ‘Be Prepared’ is the Boy Scout motto, and more than a quarter of a million Scouts proved they WERE prepared.” One of the first actions suggested was that in every large city, the Scouts should mobilize, march to the City Hall, and offer their services to the Mayor. According to the magazine, many Scouts immediately did exactly that.

Mobilized Scouts offering their services at an unnamed city hall.

But the biggest task undertaken by Scouts was to help win the war through the gardening movement. As soon as the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that every citizen was needed to increase the food supply, the National Headquarters of the BSA issued an emergency circular urging every scout to start a garden and persuade nine other people to do the same.

The slogan adopted was, “every scout to feed a soldier.” It meant that every Scout was expected to raise enough food to feed himself, thus freeing up enough food to feed the soldier.

Almost immediately, National Headquarters fired off a telegram to London, to none other than Herbert Clark Hoover, who was already “famous for his great efficiency in managing the enormous relief work among stricken peoples of Europe.” The cable read:

Two hundred fifty thousand Boy Scouts of America tender services as your aides as producers and conservers of food as service to our country.

Mr. Hoover immediately cabled back his response, and his response was that Scouts should raise beans:

The prime service of our Country in this War is ships and food, and we can here display the true American ability at great efforts.

In order to provide the food necessary we must from this moment eliminate all waste and stimulate food production at every point. We must send to our Allies more wheat, corn, beans, meat, bacon and lard than we have ever sent before if their men are to fight and their women and children to live; and our people must economize and eat other things.

Among these foodstuffs couldn’t the Scouts take as their own province the stimulation of bean production, for there is not only a great shortage at Europe and at home, but they are the best of foods. Let them help make America able to export ten times as many beans as she ever exported before. To do this, let the Boy Scouts see to it that they are planted everywhere, so that the biggest bean crop ever known shall be the war contribution of the Boy Scouts to America and her Allies.

(Signed) Herbert C. Hoover.

Theodore Roosevelt, upon receiving a copy of Hoover’s telegram, signaled his assent: “I think Mr. Hoover’s suggestion that the Scouts take as their own province the stimulation of bean production is particularly good. Let each Scout start a garden and thereby help feed the soldiers.”

Scouts clearing idle land in preparation for a crop. The caption notes that fire is a useful ally, but the Scouts watch it closely. In a month, this field was to be covered with navy beans.

The magazine noted that navy or field beans were an easy crop to grow. They would show good yields even on poor soil or thin soils. They could be planted late, after the rush of other planting had subsided, and required only a third of the cultivation required of corn. With a good season and average care, a yield of 10 to 25 bushels per acre was to be expected. Their high food value and ease of storage made them an excellent war crop.

The magazine also noted that many Scout camps would turn into farms. Since there was a scarcity of farm help, the Scouts would help to fill the gap. Even though they would learn to plant and pick, there would still be plenty of fun after the day’s work was over.

Finally, the magazine announced that the BSA would be offering a War Service Emblem for Scouts who were responsible for starting ten gardens or inducing ten people to increase their garden acreage.

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