How does a telegram work
Telegraph Key | Let's Talk Science
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Technology You Didn't Know Still Existed: The Telegram
The envelope for a Western Union Telegraph, c.
1861 (Photo: Library of Congress)
Today, where disposable instant messaging, emails, texts and tweets are all around us, it is a pleasant surprise to find out that the grandfather of quick communication is still with us.
Yes, it is still possible to send a personal, hand-delivered telegram.
A telegram sent to Atlas Obscura’s Editor-In-Chief from Luke Spencer on 22 May, 2015
On January 27th, 2006, the world’s most famous telegram agency Western Union announced that it “will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services..” For over 150 years the world’s greatest joys, deepest condolences and proudest successes had been hand delivered within their iconic yellow envelopes, written in its own distinctive brief prose.
At one point in the 1920s, Western Union and its army of uniformed messengers were sending more than 200 million telegrams every year. But the advent of faxes, then emails and finally SMS messaging saw the numbers dwindle, bringing to an end the golden age of the telegram.
But a handful of companies are carrying on the tradition. Principal amongst them is the International Telegram Company who inherited and still operate Western Union’s former telex and cablegram network. They are well aware of their own anachronism: “Most people are pretty surprised to learn that telegrams still exist, and in fact are still pretty widely used in some parts of the world,” says Colin Stone, Director of Operations. Overall, he says that about 20 million telegrams are still delivered every year.
And this isn’t just a gimmick; text messages and e-mails might work for saying hi but when it comes to urgent hand-delivered messages, the telegram is still the gold standard. “People use them for canceling contracts and sending legal notifications because a copy of the message is retained in our files for 7 years and can be legally verified,” explains Stone. Everything from legal notices to social correspondence for births, funerals and weddings are being routinely sent by telegrams.
In the U.S., Stone says that people still send telegrams for a simple reason, echoing the famous quote about why humans climb Mount Everest—“because they can.”
Samuel Morse, c. 1840 (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)
Prior to the invention of the telegraph, long distance communication was as slow as the horse which carried it; the Pony Express could deliver a message across America in roughly 10 days. This was obviously not ideal. In 1825, an aspiring painter was in Washington, D.C. working on a commissioned portrait of the famed French general Marquis de Lafayette when he got an urgent message from his father saying, “Your dear wife is convalescent.” Leaving the painting of Lafayette unfinished, the painter rushed home to New Haven, Connecticut, to find that his beloved wife was not only dead but had already been buried. He devoted himself to creating a faster method of long-distance communication, and would lend his name to an invention that deliver messages almost instantly; his name was Samuel Morse.
Morse learnt that over in England, inventors William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone had installed the world’s first commercial telegraphy system on the Great Western Railway in 1838. Their patented system involved a series of needles that pointed to letters of the alphabet on a board, spelling out a message. Samuel Morse developed a single wire electrical telegraph that proved more simple and popular. Along with his assistant Alfred Vail, they created the Morse code signaling alphabet, and patented his electric telegraph to deliver it. In May 1844, Morse sent the ominous sounding message from the floor of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington to Baltimore, “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT.”
William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone’s electric telegraph from 1837, which is now held in the London Science Museum
(Photo: Geni/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 4.0)
Almost overnight telegraphs transformed the way the world communicated. In 1846 there was only Morse’s experimental line between Baltimore and Washington, but by 1850 there were 12,000 miles of cable and over 20 companies in the United States alone.
Tom Standage, in his 1998 book The Victorian Internet, described how “it revolutionized business practice, gave rise to new forms of crime....romances blossomed over the wires and secret codes were devised by some users and cracked by others.”
The method of sending a telegram was simple. By visiting the office of a telegraph company, or later, by over the telephone, you would compose a message as briefly as possible, for telegrams charged by the word. The message was then conveyed by the electric wire in Morse code to its destined office where it would be written or typed, stuck to a form and hand delivered, usually by a boy on a bicycle. If you were living in Pittsburgh in the 1850s it was entirely possible your telegram would have been delivered by a young Andrew Carnegie. Or over in Port Huron, Michigan, a boy of the name Thomas Edison.
A group of Western Union telegraph messengers in Norfolk, Virginia, photographed by Lewis Wickes Hine in 1911 (Photo: Library of Congress)
So prevalent was the number of aspiring cable companies, that Standage notes in the 1852 US Census, “the telegraph industry even merited 12 pages to itself.
” One such company was the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company. Gradually buying up its competitors, it would come to virtually monopolize the entire telegram industry under its new name, Western Union.
Known today principally as a money wiring service, Western Union was once the premier American telegraph operator. In 1861 it completed the first transcontinental telegraph line in the U.S., instantly rendering the Pony Express obsolete. Such was its success that in 1884, it was one of the original 11 stocks on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (The shareholders were no doubt delighted to read of their profits on the stock exchange ticker, especially as it was Western Union which had invented it.) By 1930, Western Union had moved into an opulent example of art deco architecture on 60 Hudson Street, New York. With the tagline “Telegraph Capital of the World,” it came complete with over 70 million feet of cable, its own gymnasium and an auditorium for the instructing of messengers.
The Western Union Telegraph Building in New York City, photographed in 1931 (Photo: Library of Congress)
In 1854 in a house overlooking Gramercy Park, the industrialist, philanthropist and inventor of such varied creations as the first U.S. steam locomotive and Jell-O, Peter Cooper, met a prominent New York financier named Cyrus West Field. Together with a team of three other backers, including Samuel Morse, they created a 400-mile underwater telegraph line connecting Newfoundland with Nova Scotia. Three years later, West started laying the first telegraph wire along the Atlantic ocean floor.
A map of telegraph connections in 1891 from Stielers Hand Atlas (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)
Just 14 years after Morse’s first telegram, Queen Victoria sent a message of congratulations to President James Buchanan. The first transatlantic telegram was met with such hysteria in New York that impromptu parades and fireworks accidentally set fire to City Hall.
Photograph showing the White House telegraph office and staff during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, 1902 (Photo: Library of Congress)
It’s hard to imagine now, but the birth of the telegram transformed language as much as business. Just as instant messaging today has developed its own abbreviated lexicon of terms such as IRL, IMHO, and ICYMI, so to did telegraphy. Due to telegrams being priced by the word, brevity was the order of the day. Companies soon did a thriving business in publishing code word directories.
In one thrifty telegram comprising of the word COQUARUM the poor recipient would be reliably informed that the ‘engagement broken off.’ In business you might well ask someone to LOZENGE (“what shall we do with documents and bills of lading attached”) to which the stern reply GIGGLE would instruct, “Use your discretion as to delivery of documents.”
AWestern Union telegram from 1930, announcing the Millsaps College beats MSU (then Mississippi A&M) in football
(Photo: NatalieMaynor/WikiCommons CC BY 2.
0)
Soon a Hemingway-esque prose developed, with brief, terse sounding messages omitting expensive pronouns and adjectives. Guide books such as Nelson E. Ross’ 1928 How to Write Telegrams Properly had whole chapters devoted to “Extra Words and Their Avoidance”, and “How Unnecessary Words Creep In”.
Under the ethos that “Brevity is the soul of Telegraphy”, social formalities in letter writing such as “Dear Madame” and “Yours very truly” were quickly done away with. Shortness and pithiness were the order of the day. During the filming of The Big Sleep, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the labyrinthine plot was so confusing that director Howard Hawks cabled author Raymond Chandler asking who killed the chauffeur. Chandler sent a simple telegram back— “NO IDEA”.
The shortest telegram exchange sent is attributed to Oscar Wilde. Living in Paris, he is supposed to have cabled his publisher in London to see how how his new book was doing. The telegram simply read “?” to which the reply cabled back was “!” (Although the story might be apocryphal; the same telegram has been attributed to Victor Hugo.
)
While the majority of telegrams were used for everyday conversation and business, some are particularly poignant. Such as this desperate message telegraphed on the night of April 14th, 1912:
SOS SOS CQD CQD TITANIC. WE ARE SINKING FAST. PASSENGERS ARE BEING PUT INTO BOATS. TITANIC.
During wartime, the most dreaded telegram of all was hand delivered on behalf of either the War Department or the Navy Department. The message began “The Secretary of War (for soldiers and airmen) or Secretary of Navy (for sailors and marines), regrets to inform you that [name, rank and serial number of the man in the military service] was killed in action (or missing in action).”
Other telegrams changed world history. One of the most infamous was a telegram consisting of a secret message in groups of coded numbers that Western Union delivered to the German Ambassador to Mexico on January 19th, 1917. Sent by German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman it was intercepted by British intelligence and sent to President Woodrow Wilson.
The Zimmerman telegram January 19, 1917 (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)
The telegram spelt out that Germany would offer US territories to Mexico in return for joining the German side. The telegram was published in the US press on March 1st, 1917, and a month later, despite Wilson being elected under the banner ‘He Kept Us Out of the War’, the United States declared war on Germany. In his book The Codebreakers, David Kahn rightly states that,”no other single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences......never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a secret message.”
Telegrams may not be as widespread as they once were, but through companies such as the International Telegram Company they remain perhaps the most elegant way to send a message since 1844.
Birth, heyday and death of the telegraph / Sudo Null IT News
A few decades ago, the telegram was a real event. The postman rang the doorbell, announced the message, handed over the envelope.
But only the head of the family could read the telegram. They looked for glasses for him for several minutes while he stood with this telegram, then he first silently, and then read the message aloud. By telegram they informed about death, about birth, congratulated on holidays. Today it is easier to do this - you can send a text message or a message on social networks. It’s just that paper media was sometimes kept longer than our phones now live.
Let's remember how it all began and how the telegraph became one of the best and fastest means of communication.
Telegram to the parents of cosmonaut German Titov. GS Titov Museum
Europe
Swiss physicist Georges Louis Lessage in 1774 assembled one of the first working models of the electric telegraph. Information was transmitted between two rooms of his house, and each of the 26 letters of the alphabet corresponded to a separate wire.
Another inventor, Lomon, used a single wire to transmit information.
This is an excerpt from an article published in Dublin in 1793: "Paris, October 16, 1787. In the evening I was with Monsieur Lomont, a very witty and inventive mechanic who improved the cotton spinning machine ... In electricity, he made a wonderful discovery. You write two or three words on paper, he takes the sheet into the room and turns on the machine Locked in a cylindrical case, on top of which is an electrometer - a small cork ball, a wire is connected to a cylinder and an electrometer in another room, and Lomon's wife, noticing the corresponding movements of the ball, writes down the words. It follows that the inventor formed an alphabet of movements. Since the length of the wire does not affect the effect, correspondence can be carried out at any distance within the city or outside its walls, or for purposes more worthy. However this machine is used, it is a wonderful invention. "
Telegraph of Jean Louis Lessage
On February 22, 1804, Francisco Salvá introduced an electric telegraph based on the Volta battery to the Academy of Sciences in Barcelona.
The system consisted of six small containers of water. Two wires are lowered into the liquid, and depending on the change in their polarity, each tank shows two signals due to the release of hydrogen.
More detailed information, including the alphabet for decoding signals, has not reached us.
Telegraph Francisco Salva
Five years later, a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Sömmerring, at the behest of King Maximillian, invents the telegraph, again using electrolysis and a voltaic column. An aquarium was placed on the receiving side, in which hydrogen bubbles were emitted from the electrode corresponding to the desired letter. Half as many oxygen bubbles formed from the second letter - that is, two symbols went along the wires at the same time.
Sömmering Telegraph
In 1820, the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted sent out a pamphlet "Experiments concerning the action of electric conflict on a magnetic needle" to accessible scientific institutions and journals.
At lectures at the university, he demonstrated the heating of a wire by electricity from a voltaic column. During the experiment, a marine compass lay on the table, over the top of which a wire passed. When the scientist closed the electrical circuit, the compass needle deviated. According to legend, one of those present in the audience noticed this. Another legend says that the scientist himself noticed this deviation. Oersted, in the course of his experiments, found that when the distance from the wire to the arrow is less than 3/4 inch, the deviation is 45 °, and as the distance increases, the angle decreases proportionally. The amount of deviation varies depending on the power of the device. Oersted tested the effect on a wire made of different materials, tried to shield the arrow with wood, glass, resin, and placed it in water.
In an 1820 pamphlet, he writes: “The main conclusion from these experiments is that the magnetic needle deviates from its equilibrium position under the action of the voltaic apparatus and that this effect appears when the circuit is closed, and it does not appear when the circuit is open.
Precisely because the circuit remained open, attempts of the same kind, made a few years ago by famous physicists, were not crowned with success.
The discovery of Hans Christian Oersted served as the basis for electromagnetic telegraphs.
Deflection of a magnetic needle under the influence of an electric current
Russia
In 1832, Paul Schilling, a Russian diplomat and historian, a participant in the Patriotic War, assembled an electromagnetic telegraph in St. Petersburg. Telegraph technology was based on the effect of deflection of a magnetic needle when interacting with an electromagnetic field from electrical wires. The background of this invention is extremely interesting: Schilling five years earlier blew up underwater mines by means of an electric current flowing through rubber-insulated wires.
Three or four keys were pressed simultaneously to transmit one letter. On the receiving apparatus, the conductors were connected to an electromagnet with a magnetic needle hanging above it, which turned when current flowed through the wire.
Along with the arrow turned a signal circle, black on one side and white on the other. Schilling developed a special code so that six arrows with signal circles would be enough to transmit all the letters of the Russian alphabet. In a minute, ten characters could be transmitted over eight wires.
Schilling's six-point multiplier telegraph machine
In 1841, the first regular telegraph line was opened connecting the Winter Palace with the General Staff. This happened after the death of the inventor in 1837. But Schilling's work was continued by Boris Semyonovich Jacobi, who by 1839 created several telegraph systems, including a writing one.
In Boris Jacobi's writing telegraph, an electromagnet set in motion a pencil, leaving notes on a moving porcelain board. The device worked on the line Winter Palace - General Staff - Tsarskoye Selo. The records were difficult to decipher, which the inventor was not happy about.
By 1845, Jacobi had made a synchronous pointer with a horizontal dial, electromagnetic drive and keyboard, and by 1850, the world's first direct-printing telegraph.
Only his work was considered a military secret by the government, which is why few people knew about the project.
BS Yakobi's pointer telegraph apparatus with a vertical dial
In 1844 Jacobi was invited to build a telegraph line along the railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The inventor proposed to include an auxiliary battery in the line, which will allow transmission in case of damage to the insulation of the underground cable. A similar device was then used when laying a cable along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Unfortunately, Jacobi did not complete the line, the order for the construction of a network of telegraph lines was eventually received by the German company "Siemens & Halske" station in the station building of the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway. On October 1 of this year, the Central Telegraph company begins its history. In 1869 the station moved to Myasnitskaya Street.
By the end of 1855, the telegraph covered the cities of Central Russia and began to connect the country with Europe.
In 1880, several types of telegraph apparatuses and teletypes were used in Russia.
Central Telegraph on Myasnitskaya Street, circa 1900
USA
American inventor Samuel Morse patented his version of the telegraph in 1840. The key or "hammer" closed and opened the electrical circuit, the automatic receiver recorded the signals. Current pulses of a certain duration caused an electromagnetic pen to oscillate, reproducing "dots" and "dashes" on a paper tape. The pen either squeezed out the signals or applied them with ink.
Telegraph key, aka "hammer"
In 1843, Congress passed a bill and granted the inventor a subsidy for the construction of a line between Washington and Baltimore, 65 kilometers long.
The first attempt to lay a cable underground using the invention of Ezra Cornell - a special trench plow - was unsuccessful. But in 1844 the line was opened, the wires went along the telegraph poles.
So you could save on insulation.
Amos Kendall, a former postmaster general in two cabinets of presidents, immediately realized how useful the telegraph was, with its high speed of information transfer, and attracted investors to the project. Morse began licensing his invention, and by 1851 fifty independent telegraph companies had opened in the United States.
Illustration from Ezra Cornell's cable plow patent. Source
In 1846, the Royal Earl House patented a printing telegraph capable of transmitting forty words per minute. The patent for this type of telegraph was owned by Judge Samuel Selden, with whom Hyrum Sibley, Sheriff of Monroe County, New York, founded the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company (NYMVPTC). Seven years later, the name changed to "Western Union" - "Western Union".
Instead of laying new telegraph lines, entrepreneurs began to buy up existing ones and combine them into one system. In three years, the number of Western Union offices increased to 4,000, and capital - from 220 thousand dollars to 48 million.
Sending a telegram across the US in 1854 cost $20 per message. Because of this, there were not so many applicants, and businessmen willingly sold their companies to Hiram Sibley. In 1854 Western Union bought a patent for the Morse telegraph.
Printing telegraph 1900, manufactured by Siemens & Halske, St. Petersburg
In 1861, Western Union connected the West and East coasts of the United States with a single transcontinental line in 112 days. Before this line appeared, messages traveled such a distance for ten days - they were carried by the most courageous and desperate young people on horseback. And not all letters reached because of the constant attacks of bandits.
Laying of a transcontinental telegraph line. A Pony Express service employee greets construction workers.
Underwater telegraph lines in Europe
By the middle of the 19th century, telegraph networks connected most of the major cities of Europe and the United States - by land.
But sending a telegram across the ocean was difficult. Letters continued to travel by steamboat, delivered in twenty days at best. In a world where international relations were becoming more and more intense, the creation of communications between the Old and New Worlds was a matter of time. The idea of laying a telegraph wire along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean was proposed by Samuel Morse, then it was supported by the English physicist Charles Whitson. But it was rejected as unfeasible. Gutta-percha, discovered in India, came to the aid of entrepreneurs and scientists, which Werner von Siemens proposed to use for isolation.
One of the first submarine lines was laid by the English engineer John Brett between France and England. The warship "Vigdeon" showed the ship "Goliath" with a cable on board the path, marking it with buoys with flags. The cable was immersed in water, every 15 minutes a load of 10 kilograms of lead was suspended from it. The first telegram went along the line, but immediately after it the connection stopped working.
A French fisherman accidentally pulled out a piece of cable with a net.
The first cable consisted of two copper wires two millimeters thick covered with a gutta-percha sheath. For the second attempt, four wires were used, each of which was protected with a gutta-percha sheath six millimeters thick. All the wires, together with five round tarred and lard-soaked hemp cords, were twisted into one cable, entwined with a common tarred hemp cord. Another hemp layer was applied on top, and after that the cable was wrapped around with ten galvanized iron wires with a diameter of seven millimeters. The first cable weighed 14 tons, and the second, improved, already 166 tons. Now an accident in the form of a seine thrown into the sea could not interfere with communication between countries.
In November 1852 a direct telegraph service was established between London and Paris, and later connected England with Ireland, Germany, Holland and Belgium. Sweden was connected with Norway, Italy with Sardinia and Corsica.
In 1854-1855, a cable was laid across the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
Transatlantic cable
Entrepreneur Cyrus West Field, using the experience of companies laying submarine cables, raised sufficient investments for the project of laying a cable along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. In 1856, the ships Agamemnon and Niagara departed from the coast of Ireland, each carrying a coil of cable weighing one and a half thousand tons. The cable was made of a seven-wire copper rope with a gutta-percha sheath, the cores of which were covered with tarred hemp, and on the outside the cable was twisted with 18 more cords of 7 iron wires each. The length of the cable was four thousand kilometers.
Transatlantic link route: Ireland - Newfoundland
A few days later the cable broke and the project had to be shelved. A few months later, a second attempt took place - again a failure. The third attempt took place in 1858, they managed to lay the cable from Ireland to Newfoundland.
On August 16 of that year, Queen Victoria of Great Britain congratulated US President James Buchanan on the successful project, but a few months later the connection was broken.
Cyrus Field did not give up even then. Eight years later, in 1864, he began laying cable with improved insulation using the British steamer Great Eastern, with a displacement of 32,000 tons. The cable broke during installation. In 1866, the same ship made a second attempt - and then it was finally possible to provide a connection between Europe and America. And the previously torn cable was found and fastened with the second fragment, so that it began to function.
Cable break scene on the Great Eastern. The Illustrated London News. Band 47. 1865. Source
Samples of cables that formed the transatlantic communication line
From the US to Europe via Alaska
The American Western Union decided to go the other way - through Alaska. In 1867, Russia sold Alaska to the United States for $7.
2 million, and Western Union received from the authorities the right to lay lines along military and postal routes, including railroad lines.
The project of laying a cable across Alaska was called the "Russian-American Telegraph". He envisioned a line from San Francisco, California to Moscow through Oregon, Washington Territory, Columbia, Alaska, the Bering Strait, and Siberia, connecting the US and Europe.
Although the project failed, it gave impetus to the development of all the territories through which it passed.
Telegraph line in Alaska
Main telegraph lines in 1891
In 1870 a cable was laid to India to link London and Bombay via Egypt and Malta. The map below shows the main telegraph lines in 1891.
Public domain
Remittances
The ability to instantly send messages over long distances opened the way for new types of business. Money by mail in Russia, according to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, has been sent since 1781.
In the 19th century, a modernized service appeared - postal orders. It was not the bills themselves that were sent by mail, but special coupons that the recipient brought to the post office in order to pick up cash. And it was forbidden to put banknotes in envelopes.
An extensive telegraph network in the United States allowed Western Union to begin providing telegraphic money orders in 1871. The service turned out to be so popular that in five years the company held 37 190 transfers of $2.6 million with an average transfer of $70. That's over $56 million in 2016 prices. This service is now the main business for the company. In 2015, Western Union made 262 million customer-to-customer money transfers, totaling $82 billion.
In the Soviet Union, money transfers were one of the important public telegraph services.
Wire transfer form, USSR
Stock market quotes
In the middle of the 19th century, the stock market began to emerge in the United States.
Securities were traded on the stock exchanges themselves. It would be much more convenient to find out the current quotes while sitting in a brokerage office and make purchases and sales directly from it. This opportunity was opened by the telegraph, bringing paper trading closer to real time.
Royal Earl House in 1846 patented a printing telegraph that produced text as output. It was the great-great-great-grandfather of modern printers. The first model was fragile, often the synchronization between the sender and receiver was broken. Several current pulses were needed to print one letter, and the system did not work at long distances. The model, improved by David Hughes, worked with the help of watch mechanisms - this was how the synchronization of the devices was achieved. This model was used in Russia from 1865 until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
Ready-to-print telegraph messages, without the need for lengthy deciphering of dots and dashes, made it possible to create ticker machines for transmitting stock quotes.
In 1869, Thomas Edison introduced such a machine, capable of printing one character per second.
Thomas Edison's ticker machine
Time
Now our smartphones and computers synchronize time by radio. In the 1930s in the US, you could rent a watch that synchronized with a Western Union master clock so you always knew exactly what time it was. In 1877, a time ball was installed on the roof of the company's headquarters in New York, by which the inhabitants of the city could compare their watches. Five minutes before noon, the ball was raised to the very top of the spire, to a height of 96 meters above the street. The ten-story building of the company at that time was the tallest in New York and the United States. Two minutes before noon, a signal was sent by telegraph to the US Naval Observatory in Washington about the status of the positive readiness of the balloon for descent.
At noon, an operator from the observatory activated the trigger and the ball fell seven meters down.
After the balloon descent, a signal was sent to the observatory. Thanks to this service, the company was the "Keeper of the Nation's Time" for almost the entire 20th century.
Western Union clock
The ability to quickly send messages has opened up new business opportunities. Large companies with a developed branch network, thanks to telegraph communications, and then to the teletype, began to work as a single entity, transmitting information in real time.
The encoded telegraph signal was difficult to read and transmit without special training, so from the very beginning, scientists tried to invent a device that was more "friendly" to users. So it was with the writing telegraph of Boris Jacobi and the apparatus of Werner von Siemens, and this was the reason for the appearance of the teletype.
In 1872, the French inventor Jean Baudot developed a telegraph machine that allowed two or more messages to be transmitted simultaneously on the same line.
At the same time, the device transmitted messages using the letters of the Latin alphabet, and after the work of Russian craftsmen, the letters of the Russian alphabet. Devices of this type are called start-stop. In addition, Bodo created the Bodo telegraph code, which was transmitted on perforated tapes. The first Bodo apparatus began to be used in 1877 on the Paris-Bordeaux line. Until the end of the 20th century, double devices were used, capable of transmitting up to 760 characters per minute. In addition to the apparatus, Bodo made a distributor, a decoder and a printing mechanism, which simplified the work of specialists.
Two or six telegraph operators were coding messages, trying not to stray. They used two fingers of the left and three fingers of the right hand, sending signals in turn. But the most interesting thing happened on the other side - letters were printed on paper tape, not a code.
In 1901, after the creation of the keyboard for the telegraph machine, the code was finalized, the order of characters was changed and additional characters were added.
The 5-bit encoding and the use of letter and numeric case remained.
Baudot machine: keypad and dispenser
The invention of Baudot and the ticker machine were the forerunners of the teletypewriter. A teletypewriter is an electromechanical printing machine for transmitting text messages.
In the 1920s, the global Telex Network was created, reaching 600,000 subscribers in 100 countries. Documents sent through this network had legal force. The network was actively used by commercial companies until the teletype was replaced by fax, and then by the Internet.
Only pale traces of the once common device's popularity remain, such as the traditional tty prefix (from TeleTYpe) for Unix text terminals. Some departmental radio stations still broadcast in teletype mode, transmitting information such as weather reports.
Teletype, which was part of the Telex network
The American "Western Union" sent the last telegram in 2006, switching completely to the transfer of money.
In 2004, the telegraph was turned off in the Netherlands, and in 2013 in India. In some countries, in particular in Russia, public services are still working. Sometimes telegrams are used to send subpoenas, money transfers, even congratulations. At a time when the transfer of information is no longer a problem thanks to the deep penetration of the Internet and mobile communications, simple letters or telegrams become a whim that allows you to feel the atmosphere of the past. But the telegraph networks themselves have been mostly dismantled, so messages are transmitted through modern communication channels.
Telegram path. How to send a telegram. » Children's Encyclopedia (first edition)
What is transmitted by wire. How does the telegraph work? Over two hundred million telegrams travel annually across our country, and any of them must reach the addressee on time. In the work of the telegraph there should be special clarity. Have you noticed how attentively the receptionist reads the telegram? She gives her a "start in life": she makes up the so-called service heading.
From this heading and telegraph documentation, one can trace the path of the telegram and even find out exactly where it is at the moment.
Morse telegraph.
Here is a telegram on the telegraph desk. If this is a Morse apparatus, then the telegraph operator transmits it, working on a key. But no matter how fast he works, more than 15-20 telegrams per hour cannot be transmitted. Therefore, despite the simplicity of the device, the Morse apparatus has become a rarity.
The telegraph machine, invented in 1876 by the Parisian telegraph mechanic Emile Baudot, serves well.
When transmitting on a Morse code, current flows through the line only when the key is pressed. The time when the key is not pressed is not used, although the line is free. Is it possible to fill it and "shorten" the signals at the same time? It turns out you can.
This is done in a Baudot apparatus. A special device - a distributor - connects transmitters and receivers to the line in turn so that there are no "free" gaps.
Several devices can operate simultaneously on one line.
But such a device is inconvenient because of its bulkiness, the complexity of the device and maintenance. The nine-fold device occupies 20 tables and weighs over 2 tons. To learn how to work on it, you need to study a special code. A major drawback of the Bodo apparatus is the need for strict coordination of the action of two apparatuses working with each other. This means that the mechanisms of an apparatus, for example, in Moscow, must move in exactly the same way as the mechanisms of an apparatus located thousands of kilometers away.
Therefore, the low-speed Morse apparatus, the bulky and complex Bodo apparatus were replaced by start-stop direct-printing apparatus such as a typewriter. They basically operate now on telegraph communications. Telegrams here are accepted on paper tape or on a sheet of paper. Almost any literate person can transfer the text to them. These devices do not require adjustment for a long time, and it is much easier to coordinate their work than the Bodo device.
Typewriter-type start-stop telegraph apparatus.
But we left our telegram on the telegraph desk. Most likely it is a music stand for the start-stop apparatus. In less than a minute, she would be at another station. Of course, her path is not always so simple. If there is no direct connection, then the telegram will pass through one or more intermediate stations. What if the line is damaged? Then it will have to be transferred by a roundabout way.
For electric current, it almost doesn't matter if you travel 100, 200, 1000 or 10,000 km. The time difference will be tenths of a second. The delay usually occurs because at each intermediate station the telegram must be received and retransmitted further. There are also possible distortions of the text.
How can we speed up transmission and avoid possible distortion of telegrams?
As in all areas of technology where an increase in speed is required, an automatic machine was used in telegraphy. It receives electrical signals from one station and transmits them to another.
How to write an electrical signal? Usually, the transfer is made on a special paper tape. Signals are recorded in the form of holes, according to a predetermined code. Such a tape is called perforated. Passed through a special transmitter - the transmitter, it serves as a carrier of electrical signals at an intermediate point.
Is it possible to do without re-reception? We have already said that it is impossible to connect the points "each with each". But temporarily a direct connection between any two points can be realized. This principle is becoming more and more widespread in the subscriber telegraph.
Direct connection method is used to exclude telegram re-reception. If, for example, a telegram is sent from Leningrad to Alma-Ata via Moscow, then in Moscow they connect the line going to Leningrad with the line going to Alma-Ata. In such cases, the telegraph operators of these cities work directly with each other. But this method requires a large number of communication lines.
After all, if Moscow no longer has lines to Leningrad and Alma-Ata, then during the "conversation" of these cities, it remains without communication with them.
The use of alternating currents for telegraphy made it possible to better solve the problem of obtaining a large number of telegraph channels, and the method of direct connections is now becoming widespread.
Telegraph apparatus.
Imagine an institution. It is deep night, but in one of the rooms you can hear the characteristic tapping of a telegraph apparatus. There are no people around him, but the tape runs and runs. But now the telegrams are received, and the apparatus stops: it is equipped with an automatic start and stop device. Talking on the phone is convenient, but its content can be forgotten if you do not write it down in a timely manner. And the entire content of the telegraph conversation remains on tape or a sheet of paper, it can always be restored.
But no matter how perfect the telegraph and automatic receiving devices are, the transmission of the telegram at the point of departure is done manually.
Therefore, the transmission rate is limited. In addition, no matter how highly qualified the employee is, he can make a mistake.
But the phototelegraph transmission method allows you to fully automate communication. “Taken by telegraph” - such a caption under a photograph can often be seen in newspapers. Not only a photograph, but also any image - a drawing, a drawing, a newspaper article, a personal letter, a geographical map - can be transmitted by phototelegraph.
Why, with all these advantages, is the vast majority of telegrams transmitted by ordinary telegraph apparatus? Because with modern methods of transmitting electrical signals over wires, it is more expedient to organize 16-18 ordinary telegraph connections than one phototelegraph one: the processing of telegrams received on photographic paper is also complicated and expensive.
But there are telegraph devices in which images are received on electrochemical paper. The phototelegram can be handed over to the addressee immediately, without additional processing.
