TELEGKAPHY— PONY EXPRESS TO BEAM RADIO ^ 



By Geoege C. Hillis 



General Inspector, Western Union Telegraph Co. 

 New York, N. T. 



[With 3 plates] 



Inasmuch as the Western Society of Engineers is composed of many 

 branches of the engineering profession who may not be familiar with 

 terms used in the communications field, I shall endeavor to review 

 the progress of written communications from the early Morse days to 

 the recently developed microwave radio beam in what our transmis- 

 sion research engineer, F. B. Bramhall, likes to call "basic barnyard 

 English.-' 



To many people, a telegram calls to mind a mental picture of a 

 Western Union messenger boy pedaling his bicycle down the street, 

 or of a Morse operator copying a message by listening to the dots and 

 dashes of a sounder. New and improved methods of operation have 

 made strides to change this mental picture of telegraphy. 



The telegraph was invented in 1832 and mechanically perfected 

 in 1837 by Samuel F. B. Morse. The first practical telegraph instru- 

 ment, as he termed it, was exhibited in his rooms at New York Uni- 

 versity. His receiver consisted of a magnetically operated pendulum 

 mounted on a picture frame, marking on a moving paper tape. It was 

 not until 184^ that the first public telegraph message "What hath God 

 wrought?" was sent by Morse over the first line from Washington, 

 D. C., to Baltimore. 



The marked paper tape had to be deciphered by the receiving opera- 

 tor and the message written on a blank. The speed of operation de- 

 pended on the ability of the sending operator and the receiving equip- 

 ment and was probably less than 10 words a minute. 



It took but a short time before the receiving operator found ho 

 could read the dots and dashes without having to look at the tape — 

 translating the sound was much easier. Improvement in apparatus 

 allowed the operator to send about 11 clots per second with a semi- 

 automatic sending machine termed a "bug." Exceptionally good 

 sending and receiving operators could handle an average of 100 short 

 messan^es an hour. 



1 Hepi-iutod by permission from the Journal of the Western Society of Engineers, vol. 51, 

 No. 3, pt, 1, September 1946. 



191 



