Vigo County Historical Society
Historical Treasure Article

November 14, 1993
By Tim Hyde
Vigo County Historical Society

Simple system miraculous invention

Samuel F.B. Morse introduced the telegraph in 1844, and standardized the new machine’s dot-dash language as the “Morse Code.” By 1860, over 50,000 miles of telegraph wire connected the nation’s cities.

Until that time, if a man in New York wished to talk to a man in Chicago, he would have to write a letter and wait several days for it to be delivered. His only alternative was to travel in person at great expense. Morse’s telegraph made it possible for instant communication to take place over nearly unlimited distances. To a world still in the horse-and-wagon age, this was nothing short of miraculous.

America’s new telegraph industry was developed by companies such as Commercial, Western Union, American, and the U.S. post office, all of which began stringing their own wires from town to town.

The railroad companies got into the act almost immediately. They were already leasing space along their tracks for the telegraph companies to run their wires, and it soon made sense for the railroads to create their own network of wires and operators to direct the movement of trains and handle company message traffic.

“Private” wires and railroad wires coexisted on the same poles until rendered obsolete by the introduction of the radio and satellite communications. In rural areas, the wires still can be seen near railroad tracks.

At the beginning of the 220the century, the basic telegraph operator’s set up consisted of a sending key, a sounder, a cross-connect panel or “patch bay” and a battery.

It was a simple system. With some crude chemistry, the operator made sure his battery was charged. Then, he used the patch bay to tap in to the wire of his choice (there usually were several wires running between towns, as required by the volume of traffic). Once the circuit was completed, the sounder would loudly click out all the dots and dashes of that wire’s traffic, and the operator simply transcribed the appropriate messages onto paper form and delivered them to the addressee.

When the operator wished to send traffic out over the wire, he closed a switch on his key and tapped out the message. The sounder then would mimic the code being generated by the operator to make it easier for him to catch errors in his own keying.

Two operators might never meet in person, but a man could easily recognize a fellow employee on the wire by his “op fist”--the unique rhythm of his keying.

The earliest telegraph keys were simple spring-loaded affairs that would send a pulse out only as quickly as the operator could move his hand. To send three quick dots, the operator had to push the key three times.

Because transmission speed was essential to successful operation, some conscientious operators purchased and carried their own vibrating key or “bug.” With the bug, those same three quick dots could be created with a single move of the key. This special key was operated by a side to side motion, so that when pressed to the left it would emit a single dash, and when pressed to the right it would emit a series of rapid dots as long as the key was held to the right.

After 1915, automatic telegraph code machinery called the Teletype could generate, receive and automatically print messages. The machines gradually replaced many human operators.

The commercial use of manual telegraphy ended many years ago, but the chatter of a sounder can still be heard at the museum. Several keys, bugs and sounders are on display with photographs and other memorabilia. A key and sounder are hooked up and waiting for you to test your “op fist” with this early form of digital communication.

The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

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