Telegraphy

Optical Telegraf of Claude Chappe on the Litermont near Nalbach, Germany

Telegraphy (from the Greek words tele (τηλε) = far and graphein (γραφειν) = write) is the long-distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters, originally by changing something that could be observed from a distance (optical telegraphy). Radiotelegraphy or wireless telegraphy transmits messages using radio. Telegraphy includes recent forms of data transmission such as fax, email, and computer networks in general. (A telegraph is a machine for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy. The word telegraph alone generally refers to an electrical telegraph). Wireless telegraphy is also known as CW, for continuous wave (a carrier modulated by on-off keying, as opposed to the earlier radio technique using a spark gap).

Telegraphy messages sent by the telegraph operators (or telegraphers) using Morse code were known as telegrams or cablegrams, often shortened to a cable or a wire message. Later, telegrams sent by the Telex network, a switched network of teleprinters similar to the telephone network, were known as telex messages. Before long distance telephone services were readily available or affordable, telegram services were very popular. Telegrams were often used to confirm business dealings and, unlike e-mail, telegrams were commonly used to create binding legal documents for business dealings.

Wire picture or wire photo was a newspaper picture that was sent from a remote location by a facsimile telegraph.

Optical

The first telegraphs came in the form of optical telegraphs, including the use of smoke signals and beacons, which have existed since ancient times. A semaphore network invented by Claude Chappe operated in France from 1792 through 1846. It helped Napoleon enough that it was widely imitated in Europe and the U.S. The last commercial semaphore link ceased operation in Sweden in 1880.

Semaphores were able to convey information more precisely than smoke signals and beacons and consumed no fuel. Messages could be sent at much greater speed than post riders and could serve entire regions. However, like beacons and smoke signals, they were dependent on good weather to work. They required operators and towers every 30 km (20 mi), and could only accommodate about two words per minute. This was useful to governments, but too expensive for most commercial uses other than commodity price information. Electric telegraphs were to reduce the cost of sending a message thirty fold compared to semaphore.

Electrical telegraphs

Main article: Electrical telegraph

In 1775 Francisco de Salva offered an electrostatic telegraph. Samuel Thomas von Soemmering constructed his electrochemical telegraph in 1809. Also as one of the first, an electromagnetic telegraph was created by Baron Schilling in 1832. Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber built and first used for regular communication the electromagnetic telegraph in 1833 in Göttingen. The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and entered use on the Great Western Railway in Britain. It ran for 13 miles from Paddington station to West Drayton and came into operation on 9 April 1839. It was patented in the United Kingdom in 1837. In 1843 Scottish physician Alexander Bain invented a device that could be considered the first facsimile machine. He called his invention a "recording telegraph". Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires. In 1855 an Italian abbot, Giovanni Caselli, also created an electric telegraph that could transmit images. Caselli called his invention "Pantelegraph". Pantelegraph was successfully tested and approved for a telegraph line between Paris and Lyon.

The famous telegram sent by Samuel F. B. Morse from the Capitol in Washington to Alfred Vail in Baltimore in 1844: "What hath God wrought"

An electrical telegraph was independently developed and patented in the United States in 1837 by Samuel F. B. Morse. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signaling alphabet with Morse. America's first telegram was sent by Morse on January 6, 1838, across two miles (3 km) of wire at Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey. The message read "A patient waiter is no loser." On May 24, 1844, he sent the message "What hath God wrought" (quoting Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol in Washington to the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore. This message was chosen by Annie Ellsworth of Lafayette, Indiana, later Mrs. Roswell Smith (Roswell, NM was named after her husband), the daughter of Patent Commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth. The Morse/Vail telegraph was quickly deployed in the following two decades.

The first commercially successful transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed on 25 August 1858. Earlier transatlantic submarine cables installations were attempted in 1857, 1858 and 1865. The 1857 only operated intermittently for a few days or weeks before it failed. The study of underwater telegraph cables accelerated interest in mathematical analysis of very long transmission lines. The telegraph lines from Britain to India were connected in 1870 (those several companies combined to form the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1872).

Major telegraph lines in 1891

Australia was first linked to the rest of the world in October 1872 by a submarine telegraph cable at Darwin. This brought news reportage from the rest of the world. (Conley, David and Lamble, Stephen (2006) The Daily Miracle: An introduction to Journalism,(Third Edition) Oxford University Press, Australia pp. 305-307).

The telegraph across the Pacific was completed in 1902, finally encircling the world.

Another advancement in telegraph technology occurred on 9 August 1892, when Thomas Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph. He received U.S. patent 480,567, "Duplex Telegraph".

Radiotelegraphy

Nikola Tesla and other scientists and inventors showed the usefulness of wireless telegraphy, radiotelegraphy, or radio, beginning in the 1890s. Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrated to the public his receiver of wireless signals, also used as a lightning detector, on 7 May 1895. It is considered that Guglielmo Marconi sent and received his first radio signal in Italy up to 6 kilometres in 1896. Around the turn of the century, it is reported that he broadcast signals across the English Channel and in 1901, Marconi radiotelegraphed the letter "S" across the Atlantic Ocean from his station in Poldhu, Cornwall to St. John's, Newfoundland.

In 1898 Popov accomplished successful experiments of wireless communication between a naval base and a battleship. In 1900 the crew of the Russian coast defence ship General-Admiral Graf Apraksin as well as stranded Finnish fishermen were saved in the Gulf of Finland because of exchange of distress telegrams between two radiostations, located at Hogland island and inside a Russian naval base in Kotka. Both stations of wireless telegraphy were built under Popov's instructions.

Radiotelegraphy proved effective for rescue work in sea disasters by enabling effective communication between ships and from ship to shore.

Telegraphic improvements

File:WACsOperateTeletypeDoD.jpg

Teletype machines in World War II

A continuing goal in telegraphy has been to reduce the cost per message by reducing hand-work, or increasing the sending rate. There were many experiments with moving pointers, and various electrical encodings. However, most systems were too complicated and unreliable. A successful expedient to increase the sending rate was the development of telegraphese.

Other research focused on the multiplexing of telegraph connections. By passing several simultaneous connections through an existing copper wire, capacity could be upgraded without the laying of new cable, a process which remained very costly. Several technologies were developed like Frequency-division multiplexing. Long submarine communications cables became possible in segments with vacuum amplifiers between them.

With the invention of the teletypewriter, telegraphic encoding became fully automated. Early teletypewriters used Baudot code, a five-bit code. This yielded only thirty-two codes, so it was over-defined into two "shifts," "letters" and "figures". An explicit, unshared shift code prefaced each set of letters and figures.

The airline industry remains one of the last users of Teletype and in a few situations still sends messages over the SITA or AFTN networks. For example, The British Airways operations computer system (FICO) as of 2004 still used teletype to communicate with other airline computer systems. The same goes for PARS (Programmed Airline Reservation System) and IPARS that used a similar shifted six-bit Teletype code, because it requires only eight bits per character, saving bandwidth and money. A teletype message is often much smaller than the equivalent EDIFACT or XML message. In recent years as airlines have had access to improved bandwidth in remote locations, IATA standard XML is replacing Teletype as well as (EDI).

A standard timing system developed for telecommunications. The "mark" state was defined as the powered state of the wire. In this way, it was immediately apparent when the line itself failed. The characters were sent by first sending a "start bit" that pulled the line to the unpowered "space" state. The start bit triggered a wheeled commutator run by a motor with a precise speed (later, digital electronics). The commutator distributed the bits from the line to a series of relays that would "capture" the bits. A "stop bit" was then sent at the powered "mark state" to assure that the commutator would have time to stop, and be ready for the next character. The stop bit triggered the printing mechanism. Often, two stop bits were sent to give the mechanism time to finish and stop vibrating

Telex

A Siemens T100 Telex machine

A late-model British Telecom "Puma" telex machine, circa 1980s

By 1935, message routing was the last great barrier to full automation. Large telegraphy providers began to develop systems that used telephone-like rotary dialing to connect teletypes. These machines were called "telex". Telex machines first performed rotary-telephone-style pulse dialing to connect, and then sent data by Baudot code. This "type A" telex routing functionally automated message routing.

The first wide-coverage telex network was implemented in Germany during the 1930s. The network was used to communicate within the government.

At the then-blinding rate of 45.5 bits per second, up to 25 telex channels could share a single long-distance telephone channel by using "voice frequency telegraphy" multiplexing, making telex the least expensive method of reliable long-distance communication.

In 1958, Western Union Telegraph Company started to build a telex network in the United States. This telex network started as a satellite exchange located in New York City and expanded to a nationwide network. Western Union chose Siemens & Halske, now Siemens AG, and ITT to supply the exchange equipment, provisioned the exchange trunks via the Western Union national microwave system and leased the exchange to customer site facilities from the local telephone company. Teleprinter equipment was originally provided by Siemens & Halske and later by Teletype Corporation.

The major exchanges were located in New York City (1), Chicago (2), San Francisco (3), Kansas City (4), Atlanta (5), Los Angeles (6), Dallas (7), Philadelphia (8) and Boston (9). The telex numbering plan, usually a six digit number in the United States, was based on the major exchange where the customer's telex machine terminated. For example, all telex customers that terminated in the New York City exchange were assigned a telex number that started with a first digit "1". Further, all Chicago based customers had telex numbers that started with a first digit of "2". This numbering plan was maintained by Western Union as the telex exchanges proliferated to smaller cities in the United States. In the end, the Western Union telex network was built on three levels of exchanges. The highest level was made up of the nine exchange cities previously mentioned. Each of these cities had the dual capability of terminating both telex customer lines and setting up trunk connections to multiple distant telex exchanges. The second level of exchanges, located in large cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Miami, Newark, Pittsburgh and Seattle, were similar to the highest level of exchanges in capability of terminating telex customer lines and setting up trunk connections. However, these second level exchanges had a smaller customer line capacity and only had trunk circuits to regional cities. The third level of exchanges, located in small to medium sized cities, could terminate telex customer lines and had a single trunk group running to its parent exchange.

Loop signaling was offered in two different configurations for Western Union telex in the United States. The first option, sometimes called local or loop service, provided a 60 milliampere loop circuit from the exchange to the customer teleprinter. The second option, sometimes called long distance or polar was used when a 60 milliampere connection could not be achieved, provided a ground return polar circuit using 35 milliamperes on separate send and receive wires. By the 1970s, and under pressure from the Bell operating companies wanting to modernize their cable plant and lower the adjacent circuit noise that these telex circuits sometimes caused, Western Union migrated customers to a third option called F1F2. This F1F2 option replaced the dc voltage of the local and long distance options with modems at the exchange and subscriber ends of the telex circuit.

In 1970, Cuba and Pakistan were still running 45.5 baud type A Telex. Telex is still widely used in some developing countries' bureaucracies, probably because of its low costs and reliability. The UN asserted at one time that more political entities were reliably available by Telex than by any other single method.

Around 1960[?], some nations began to use the "figures" Baudot codes to perform "Type B" telex routing.

Telex grew around the world very rapidly. Long before automatic telephony was available, most countries, even in central Africa and Asia, had at least a few high-frequency (shortwave) telex links. Often these radio links were the first established by government postal and telegraph services (PTTs). The most common radio standard, CCITT R.44 had error-corrected retransmitting time-division multiplexing of radio channels. Most impoverished PTTs operated their telex-on-radio (TOR) channels non-stop, to get the maximum value from them.

The cost of Telex on radio (TOR) equipment has continued to fall. Although initially specialised equipment was required, many amateur radio operators now operate TOR (also known as RTTY) with special software and inexpensive hardware to adapt computer sound cards to short-wave radios.

Modern "cablegrams" or "telegrams" actually operate over dedicated Telex networks, using TOR whenever required.

In Germany alone, more than 400,000 telex lines remain in daily operation. Over most of the world, more than three million telex lines remain in use.

Telex messages are routed by addressing them to a telex address, e.g. "14910 ERIC S", where 14910 is the subscriber number, ERIC is an abbreviation for the subscriber (in this case Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson in Sweden) and S is the country code. Solutions also exist for the automatic routing of messages to different telex terminals within a subscriber organization, by using different terminal identities, e.g. "+T148".

A major advantage of Telex was (is) that the receipt of the message by the recipient could be confirmed with a high degree of certainty by the "answerback". At the beginning of the message, the sender would transmit a WRU (who are you) code, and the recipient machine would automatically initiate a response which was usually encoded in a rotating drum with pegs, much like a music box. The position of the pegs sent an unambiguous identifying code to the sender, so the sender could verify connection to the correct recipient. The WRU code would also be sent at the end of the message, so a correct response would confirm that the connection had remained unbroken during the message transmission. This gave Telex a major advantage over less verifiable forms of communications such as telephone and fax.

The usual method of operation was that the message would be prepared off-line, using paper tape. All common Telex machines incorporated a 5-hole paper tape reader and paper tape punch. Once the paper tape had been prepared, the message could be transmitted in minimum time. Telex billing was always by connected duration, so minimising the connect time saved money. However, it was also possible to connect in "real time", where the sender and the recipient could both type on the keyboard and these characters would be immediately printed on the distant machine.

Telex could also be used as a rudimentary but functional carrier of information from one IT system to another, in effect a primitive forerunner of Electronic Data Interchange. The sending IT system would create an output (e.g., an inventory list) on paper tape using a mutually agreed format. The tape would be sent by Telex and collected on a corresponding paper tape by the receiver and this tape could then be read into the receiving IT system.

TWX originally ran 75 bits per second, sending Baudot code and dial selection. However, Bell later developed a second generation of "four row" modems called the "Bell 101 dataset", which is the direct ancestor of the Bell 103 modem that launched computer time-sharing. The 101 was revolutionary, because it ran on ordinary subscriber lines that could (at the office) be routed to special exchanges called "wide-area data service". Because it was using the public switched telephone network, TWX had special area codes: 510, 610, 710, 810 and 910. With the demise of TWX service, these codes were re-provisioned as standard geographic NPAs in the 1990s.

Bell's original consent agreement limited it to international dial telephony. Western Union Telegraph Company had given up its international telegraphic operation in a 1939 bid to monopolize U.S. telegraphy by taking over ITT's PTT business. The result was deemphasis on telex in the U.S. and a cat's cradle of small U.S. international telex and telegraphy companies. These were known by regulatory agencies as "International Record Carriers".

• Western Union Telegraph Company developed a spinoff called "Cable System". Cable system later became Western Union International.
• ITT's "World Communications" was amalgamated from many smaller companies: "Federal Telegraph", "All American Cables and Radio", "Globe Wireless", and a common carrier division of Mackay Marine.
• RCA communications had specialised in crossing the Pacific. It later joined with Western Union International to become MCI.
• Before World War I, Tropical Radiotelegraph put radio telegraphs on ships for its owner, The United Fruit Company, in order to deliver bananas to the best-paying markets. Communications expanded to UFC's plantations, and were eventually provided to local governments. TRT Telecommunications (as it is now known) eventually became the national PTT of many small Central American nations.
• The French Telegraph Cable Company (owned by French investors) had always been in the U.S. It laid cable from the U.S. to France. It was formed by "Monsieur Puyer-Quartier". This is how it got its telegraphic routing ID "PQ".
• Firestone Rubber developed its own IRC, the "Trans-Liberia Radiotelegraph Company". It operated shortwave from Akron, OH to the rubber plantations in Liberia. TL is still based in Akron.

Bell telex users had to select which IRC to use, and then append the necessary routing digits. The IRCs converted between TWX and Western Union Telegraph Co. standards.

Arrival of the Internet

Around 1965, DARPA commissioned a study of decentralized switching systems. Some of the ideas developed in this study provided inspiration for the development of the ARPANET packet switching research network, which later grew to become the public Internet.

As the PSTN became a digital network, T-carrier "synchronous" networks became commonplace in the U.S. A T-1 line has a "frame" of 193 bits that repeats 8000 times per second. The first bit, called the "sync" bit, alternates between 1 and 0 to identify the start of the frames. The rest of the frame provides 8 bits for each of 24 separate voice or data channels. Customarily, a T-1 link is sent over a balanced twisted pair, isolated with transformers to prevent current flow. Europeans adopted a similar system (E-1) of 32 channels (with one channel for frame synchronisation).

Later, SONET and SDH (the synchronous digital hierarchy) were adapted to combine carrier channels into groups that could be sent over optic fiber. The capacity of an optic fiber is often extended with wavelength division multiplexing, rather than rerigging new fibre. Rigging several fibres in the same structures as the first fibre is usually easy and inexpensive, and many fibre installations include unused spare "dark fibre", "dark wavelengths", and unused parts of the SONET frame, so-called "virtual channels."

Currently (2006), the fastest well-defined communication channel used for telegraphy is the SONET standard OC-768, which sends about 40 gigabits per second.

The theoretical maximum capacity of an optic fiber is more than 10¹² bits (one terabit or one trillion bits) per second. No current (2006) encoding system approaches this theoretical limit, even with wavelength division multiplexing.

Since the Internet operates over any digital transmission medium, further evolution of telegraphic technology will be effectively concealed from users.

As of 2007, most telegraphic messages are carried by the Internet in the form of e-mail

E-mail displaces telegraphy

E-mail was first invented for Multics in the late 1960s. At first, e-mail was only possible between different accounts on the same computer. UUCP allowed different computers to be connected to allow e-mails to be relayed from computer to computer. With the growth of the Internet, E-mail began to be possible between any two computers with access to the Internet.

Various private networks (UUNET, the Well, GEnie) had e-mail from the 1970s, but subscriptions were quite expensive for an individual, $25 to $50 a month, just for E-mail. Internet use was then largely limited to government, academia and other government contractors until the net was opened to commercial use in the 1980s.

By the early 1990s, modems on affordable personal computers with graphical user interfaces made e-mail a viable alternative to telex systems in a business environment. But individual e-mail accounts were not widely available until local Internet service providers were in place, although demand grew rapidly, as e-mail was seen as the Internet's killer app. The broad user base created by the demand for e-mail smoothed the way for the rapid acceptance of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s.

Telegraphy as a legacy system

Western Union announced the discontinuation of all of its telegram services effective from the 31 January 2006. Only 20,000 telegrams were sent in 2005, compared with 20 million in 1929. According to Western Union, which still offers money transfer services, its last telegram was sent Friday, 27 January 2006. The company stated that this was, "... the final transition from a communications company to a financial services company."

Telegram service in the United States and Canada is still available, operated by iTelegram and Globegram. Some companies, like Swedish Telia still deliver telegrams, but they serve as nostalgic novelty items rather than a primary means of communication. The international telegram service formerly provided by British Telecom has been spun off [1] as an independent company which promotes their use as a retro greeting card or invitation.

In the Netherlands, telegram operations ceased in 2004. On 9 February 2007, according to the online edition of the Telegraaf newspaper, the Netherlands national telecommunications company KPN pulled the plug on the last Telex machine in the Netherlands after having operated a Telex network since 1933. Citing the fact that they only had 200 customers for its Telex service remaining, it was decided that it was no longer worthwhile to continue to offer Telex within the Netherlands. It is, however, still possible to send Telex messages to foreign customers through the Internet. In Belgium though, services continue through Belgacom. In this case, however, business is flourishing; many telegrams are sent every day.

In Japan, NTT provides a telegram (denpou) service that is today used mainly for special occasions such as weddings, funerals, graduations, etc. Local offices offer telegrams printed on special decorated paper and envelopes.

In New Zealand, while general public use telegrams have been discontinued, a modern variant has arisen for businesses, mainly utilities and the like, to send urgent confidential messages to their customers, leveraging off the perception that these are important messages. New Zealand Post describes the service as " a cost effective debt collection tool designed to help you to recover overdue money from your customers. New Zealand Post Telegrams are delivered by a courier in a Telegram branded envelope on Telegram branded paper. This has proven to be an effective method to spur customers into immediate action".

See also

Topics

• Baudot
• Broadband
• Clacks, a fictional, semaphore-based communications system used in Terry Pratchett's Discworld
• Electrical telegraph
• K9YA Telegraph, an e-Zine containing articles on telegraphy in amateur radio.
• Signal Corps in the American Civil War
• Telegraph code
• Wirephoto

People

• John H. Emerick
• Samuel Morse
• Baron Schilling
• Western Union

References

Further reading

• Jeffrey L. Kieve — The Electric Telegraph: a Social and Economic History David and Charles (1973) ISBN 0-7153-5883-9
• Tom Standage — The Victorian Internet Berkley Trade, (1998) ISBN 0-425-17169-8
• The Old Telegraphs, Geoffrey Wilson, Phillimore & Co Ltd 1976 ISBN 0900592796

External links

• The Porthcurno Telegraph Museum The biggest Telegraph station in the world, now a museum
• History of the U.S. Telegraphic Industry from Economic History.net
• History of the Telegraph in the United States
• Distant Writing - The History of the Telegraph Companies in Britain between 1838 and 1868
• 1911 Britannica article "Telegraph"
• A Brief History of TeleFax
• Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams
• Royal Engineers Museum — Telegraph Services
• The Telegraph Office resource for telegraph key collectors and historians
• Sparks Telegraph Key Review Interactive and pictorial history of telegraph keys and telegraphy with an emphasis on wireless.
• Anglo-American Telegraph Company, Ltd. Records, 1866 – 1947 Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
• Western Union Telegraph Company Records, 1820–1995 Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
• Early telegraphy and fax engineering, still operable in a German computer museum