Telegraphy operator

“ In making this radical change, railroad officials were most cautious, and yet we know of no case where the introduction of the telephone has been followed by its abandonment, the tendency having been in all cases toward further installations and more equipment of the modern type. The reasons for this are clear, for where the telephone is used it does not require a highly specialized man as station operator and consequently a much broader field is open to the railroads from which to draw operators. ”

“ It is the duty of the operator to obtain connections through the city exchange for the private branch subscriber, who merely asks for a certain connection and hangs up his receiver to await her call when she shall have obtained it. This saving of time of busy people by having the branch-exchange operator make their calls for them has one attending disadvantage, which is that the person in the city exchange who is called does not, when he answers his telephone, find the real party with whom he is to converse, but has to wait until that party responds to the private branch operator's call. ”

“ In outline the operation of a one-way trunk between common-battery, manual, multiple switchboards is, with modifications that will be pointed out afterwards, as follows: When a subscriber's line signal is displayed at one office, the operator in attendance at that position answers and finding that the call is for a subscriber in another office, she presses an order-wire key and thereby connects her telephone set directly with that of a B-operator at the proper other office. ”

“ During some of the winter storms and blizzards, when miles of wires were down in all directions, wireless has been the sole means of communication in certain instances.
The process of sending a wireless message is very simple. The aerial switch is usually kept in such a position that the receiving instruments are connected to the ground and aerial so that the operator is always able to hear any one calling him. We will suppose for illustration that the land station at 42 Broadway, New York City, wishes to transmit a message to the steamer "Horatio Hall." ”

“ In cases where the traffic between communities is large, where the rate is small, and where the conversations are short and more on the general order of local calls, it is usual to handle the switches exactly as local calls are trunked between central offices of the same exchange. That is, the subscriber's operator who answers the call trunks it, by the assistance of a call circuit and an incoming trunk operator. ”

“ It is the common practice of the Bell operating companies in this country to employ what is called automatic or machine ringing in connection with the B-operator's work. When the B-operator presses the ringing key associated with the incoming trunk cord, she pays no further attention to it, and she has no supervisory lamp to inform her as to whether or not the subscriber has answered. ”

“ The term "intercommunicating" has been given to a specialized type of telephone system wherein the line belonging to each station is extended to each of the other stations, resulting in all lines extending to all stations. Each station is provided with apparatus by means of which the telephone user there may connect his own telephone with the line of the station with which he wishes to communicate, enabling him to signal and talk with the person at that station.
Limitations. The idea is simple. Each person does his own switching directly, and no operator is required. ”

“ The operator throws her listening key, communicates with the subscriber, and, learning that the right-hand station is wanted, proceeds to test that line. If the line is idle, she will get no click, because the tip of her calling plug and the tested ring will be at the same ground potential. She then plugs in and presses the proper ringing-key button to send out the proper frequency to ring the particular subscriber on the line—if there be [Page 92] more than one—the current from the battery through the coil 11 and spring 17 serving during this operation to hold up the cut-off relay. ”

“ It was shown that the invention will allow an operator receiving messages or news dispatches to regulate the incoming flow of telegraphy as fast or as slow as he may desire; to stop it altogether and go out to lunch, resuming business at increased speed upon his return, and catching up with the machine upon which the messages or news has been continually recording itself in impressions of dots and dashes on a tape awaiting reproduction. ”

“ It was after the turn of the century that telegraph engineers began in earnest to think about a system of telegraphy that would permit direct intercommunication by the printed word, and direct circuit connection to any outlying subscriber as in the telephone communication system. ”

“ The telephone service has been extended to great distances—for instance, from Boston to Omaha—not by relays, but by strengthening the blows upon the medium between the transmitting circuit and the receiving one, just as we desire to do in what is called wireless telegraphy, the apparatus of which is almost identical in principle to that employed in telephony. ”

“ The Marconi station at Glacé Bay, Cape Breton, is now receiving messages for cableless transmission to England at the rate of ten cents a word—newspaper matter at five cents a word. Transatlantic wireless telegraphy is an everyday occurrence, and the common practical uses are almost beyond mention. ”

“ Many minds have, since the birth of the telegraph, occupied themselves with the problem of devising improved means of telegraphic transmission. The results have varied according to the point of view from which the subject was approached, but all, directly or indirectly, sought the same goal (the obvious one, since speed is the essence of telegraphy) , to find the best means of sending more messages over the wire in a given time. ”

“ Wireless telegraphy is part of the established order of things. The wireless telephone is practical for limited distance, but is not a commercial rival of the telegraph. Great distances are claimed, but they are matters for proof and speculation.
There is no immediate possibility that wireless telephony will take the place of local exchanges. If the time ever does come that it in any way tends to supplant the line telephone for some uses, it is more than probable that each subscriber must have his own generating station and call up direct. ”

“ FIG. 153.—The aerial system of a transatlantic station.
The wireless telephone enables a passenger on board ship to communicate direct with his home by relaying the message over the line wires. By the same means the captain of a ship can call his home office and communicate with the owner of the vessel.
Telegraphs and telephones are the nerves of the world, carrying swift messages from its brain centers to its hands, annihilating distance in thought. All differences between men as individuals and people as nations can be traced to the lack of close contact. ”

“ To-day the evening papers receive most of their news over the wire a la Bell instead of a la Morse. This has resulted in a specialization of reporters—one man runs for the news and another man writes it. Some of the runners never come to the office. They receive their assignments by telephone, and their salaries by mail. There are even a few who are allowed to telephone their news directly to a swift linotype operator, who clicks it into type on his machine, without the scratch of a pencil. ”

“ Just the same, only in radio telephony we are confronted by a problem not met with in wireless telegraphy. We have not only to transmit sound, such as isolated dots and dashes, but to send through the air every rise and fall and inflection of the human voice just as it is recorded in the minute lines of a phonographic record. ”

“ Wireless telephones will not only transmit the speech more clearly and distinctly, but have the further advantages that the initial cost is very much lower than that of wire lines, the maintenance is almost nil in comparison, the depreciation is smaller, the number of employees required is less, and a break-down is limited to the inside of the station, where it could be quickly remedied by the substitution of a duplicate spare piece of apparatus. ”

“ One such wire will care for all the business of many long-distance trunks. The public also absorbs the telegraph product of telephone lines. Such telegraph service is leased to brokers, manufacturers, merchants, and newspapers. Railway companies use portable telephone adjuncts to telegraph circuits on trains for service from stations not able to support telegraph attendants, and in a limited degree for the dispatching of trains. Telephone train dispatching, however, merits better equipment than a railway composite system affords. ”

“ At present wireless telegraphy has not superseded the ordinary methods of communicating over land, but there can be no doubt that wireless telegraphy, if free from Government restrictions, would in certain circumstances very quickly supersede land-line telegraphy, while it has proved a formidable commercial competitor to the cable as a means of connecting this country with America. ”

“ Marconi quickly found that the receiver was the least effective part of the existing apparatus. The waves spread in all directions from the sending station and become feebler and feebler as the distance increases. To make wireless telegraphy effective over any considerable distance a highly efficient and extremely sensitive receiving device is necessary. ”

“ Without going into details, I shall merely say that the great defects of this plan of multiple telegraphy were found to consist, firstly, in the fact that the receiving operators were required to possess a good musical ear in order to discriminate the signals; and secondly, that the signals could only pass in one direction along the line (so that two wires would be necessary in order to complete communication in both directions) . ”

“ CHAPTER THREE THE RADIO AMATEUR MOVEMENT From the turn of the century enthusiastic young men who built their own items of electrical and wireless apparatus were known as "Wireless Experimenters". Many of them were later granted licences for the use of "Wireless Telegraphy for experimental purposes" (in the United Kingdom) by the Postmaster General under the terms of the 1904 Wireless Telegraphy Act. ”

“ The irregular intervals at which the sparks from the coil of the transmitter fly from one terminal to the other render it impossible to split up the succession of flashes into intervals on the dot-and-dash principle, without providing for each dot a much longer period of time than is required for the transmission of messages on land lines. In fact the need for going slowly in the sending of the message is the principal stumbling-block which disconcerts ordinary telegraphic operators when they come to try wireless telegraphy. ”

“ No such trouble can occur with wireless telegraphy, and if it becomes necessary to move a wireless station with great rapidity, as for instance on an unexpected advance of the enemy, it is an advantage to have no wire to bother about. ”

“ Data-Phone makes use of all the telephone switching devices and repeating apparatus so that any type of communicating system using frequencies within the voice range may be used. For such systems the telephone company will install equipment to separate the different types of electrical transmission to prevent interference. Because Data-Phone enables not only the sound of the human voice to be sent over a telephone circuit, but information from a teletypewriter or business machine as well, this new use for the telephone system has expanded its service to many types of business communications. ”

“ There is a very decided field of opportunity for wireless telephony for long-distance work. The present systems of long-distance wires are very expensive to construct and maintain, and are subject to the whims of storms and the elements. ”

“ If the electricity with which any conducting body is charged be suddenly disturbed, electrical waves are generated which travel outwards in all directions with the velocity of light. The problem of wireless telegraphy is the problem of producing these waves by means of an instrument called a transmitter, and of recording their impact at a distance by means of an instrument called a receiver. ”

“ We have tried to describe to you the general principles underlying the art of wireless telegraphy as plainly as possible, using for illustration the simplest kind of apparatus employed for the practical sending and receiving of messages. At the present day there are several systems in actual practice, and with the growth of the art there have been many elaborations of apparatus that have come into use. ”

“ The emergence of telegraphy from the domain of experiment into that of daily practical use is a fact so undoubted, and one with which we are now so familiar, that it is impossible to say at what moment the telephone, at present a scientific toy, may become a daily necessity not only of telegraphic but of ordinary commercial work. ”

“ Discovery may need to intervene, to enable invention to restimulate.
In both telegraphy and telephony, the longer the line the weaker the current which is received at the distant end. In both telegraphy and telephony, there is a length of line with a given kind and size of wire and method of construction over which it is just possible to send intelligible speech or intelligible signals. A repeater, in telegraphy, is a device in the form of a relay which is adapted to receive these highly attenuated signal impulses and to re-transmit them with fresh power over a new length of line. ”