2. The Electric Telegraph (1860-1914) · The electric telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication, replacing earlier semaphore communication lines. In addition to its primary

2. The Electric Telegraph (1860-1914)

UNITED STATES EARLY RADIO HISTORY

THOMAS H. WHITE

s e c t i o n

2

The Electric Telegraph (1860-1914)

● Next Section: News and Entertainment by Telephone (1876-1925)

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The electric telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication, replacing earlier semaphore communication lines. In addition to its primary use for point-to-point messages, other applications were developed, including printing telegraphs ("tickers") used for distributing stock quotes and news reports.

Early communications development included a variety of semaphore telegraph lines, where spotters used visual signals to relay messages from one elevated location to the next. By the early 1800s, these mechanically-operated visual telegraph lines were fairly common in Europe, although only a few simple links were ever built in the United States. However, visual telegraphs were slow, covered limited distances, and were usable only during good visibility, so inventors worked to develop a way to send signals by electrical currents along wires, which promised nearly instantaneous transmissions over great distances in all kinds of weather. But progress was slow, in part because the nature of "electrical fluid", as it was then known, was poorly understood. William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone developed the first electric telegraph to go into commercial service, which began operation in England in 1838. Like the earlier mechanical telegraphs, this pioneer electrical telegraph used visual signaling -- in its initial configuration, two needles at a time, out of a total of five, rotated on the receiving device to point to letters on a display. Meanwhile, other inventors worked on electric telegraphs based on different principles, the most important being Samuel Morse in the United States, who developed a system that imprinted dots and dashes on a moving paper tape. (Later, operators would learn to read the dots and dashes directly, by listening to the clicking of the receiver). In 1844, the first commercial line using Morse's design went into service between Washington, District of Columbia and Baltimore, Maryland. Its success was followed by the rapid construction of telegraph lines throughout the United States, and eventually Morse's dot-and-dash approach

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became the worldwide standard. Although the electric telegraph made most visual telegraphs obsolete, telegraph wires couldn't be run out to sea, so, until the development of radio, a few semaphore links continued to provide ship-to-shore communication. A Semaphore Telegraph Station, from the April 20, 1895 issue of the Scientific American Supplement, described a French shoreline installation, which displayed meteorological signals, sent messages to passing ships, and also received commercial telegrams sent from the ships by semaphore flags. Morse used standardized sequences of dots and dashes to represent individual letters and numbers for transmitting messages, and this became known as the American Morse Code. However, Morse's original code specification included a few oddities, so although American Morse was widely adopted throughout the United States, a more consistent version was developed in Europe, known as Continental Morse Code. Telegraphic Codes, from the 1912 edition of the Electro-Importing Company's Wireless Course, compares the American and Continental Morse Codes with a third, short-lived code used by the U.S. Navy. Radio would also adopt dot-and-dash signaling in its early days, and radio operators generally used the same telegraphic codes as landline telegraphy, so at first most U.S. radio stations used American Morse, while a majority of the rest of the world used Continental Morse. However, radio's use in international communication meant that a single standard telegraphic code was needed in order to avoid confusion. Eventually Continental Morse was universally adopted for radio communication, and, reflecting its expanded status, it became known as International Morse. Meanwhile, the original American Morse largely disappeared from radio use. Although the telegraph was mostly used for sending individual messages, other more general applications were also developed. As lines spread throughout the country, the telegraph was recognized as ideal for rapidly gathering and distributing news items. In George B. Prescott's 1860 History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph, The Associated Press of the United States section reviewed the first telegraphic press association, which had been formed in 1848. (The Associated Press would later take seriously the threat that radio newscasts posed to newspaper sales. From 1922 to 1939 AP greatly restricted use of its reports by radio stations -- even those owned by newspapers -- in what became known as the "Press-Radio War"). It also became common to run special telegraph lines to major sporting events, so newspapers could receive up-to-the-minute reports. Banks of operators would be set up in the stands, each clattering away at their keys, such as those shown in Electrical Service at Harvard-Yale Football Game from the December 6, 1913 The Electrical World. An important innovation occurred beginning in the late 1840s, when Great Britain used telegraph lines to establish standardized time throughout the country. The United States was somewhat slower to adopt this practice. The first step was to establish regional "railroad times", based on the solar noon at selected hub cities, which varied by railroad company. On the Allegheny System of Electric Time Signals by Samuel Pierpont Langley, from the 1873 Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, reviewed how an astronomical observatory located near Pittsburgh, Pensylvania had expanded its telegraph time service, originally



provided to local jewellers, in order to establish a standard time for use along the Pennsylvania Central Railroad lines. It wouldn't be until 1883 that the various railroad companies agreed on a common standard, using hourly time zones offset from the base time at the Greenwich Royal Observatory in London, England. Eventually the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. began using telegraph lines to transmit daily time signals nationwide, as reported in Distribution of Time Signals by Waldon Fawcett, from the March, 1905 The Technical World. The information gathered by press associations was generally made available only to member newspapers. However, the introduction of printing telegraphs -- informally known as "tickers" -- which printed letters and numbers on paper tape, made it possible to also distribute news and information directly to paying customers. The original services were set up in major cities, serving mainly clubs and businesses, but also a few private homes. At first subscribers received stock and commodity prices, but later news items were added --in the April, 1914 issue of Technical World Magazine, C. F. Carter's Within a Tick of the News reviewed a New York City based news distribution service which provided "up-to-the minute knowledge of what the outside world is doing" to customers for whom even hourly newspaper editions were not enough. And the 1914 edition of the Our Wonder World encyclopedia included a photograph, Receiving News of the "Titanic" Disaster Over the Electric News Tape System, of persons receiving ticker reports of the 1912 sinking. The telegraph was also sometimes utilized for group connections, both by businesses and private citizens. In 1860, the A Novel Meeting section of History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph reported how thirty-three offices of the American Telegraph Company were linked together in order to conduct a business meeting. In the February, 1917 QST magazine, Irving Vermilya's Amateur Number One (telegraph extract) recalled a private line, begun in 1903, which eventually connected forty-two locations, creating a telegraphic party-line for youths in Mount Vernon, New York to exchange messages with each other 24 hours a day. And in Germany commercial enterprises made use of an innovative printing-telegraph system that provided an early form of electronic mail, as the August 21, 1912 issue of Electrical Review and Western Electrician reported in The Teleprinter that "Business offices, large hotels and other establishments in Berlin and Hamburg, are now subscribers to the teleprinter exchange" and "Messages are thus sent and received directly and without any loss of time". The clicking noise made by telegraph receivers led to audio experimentation, as recounted in Music by Telegraph section of History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph. Dr. G. P. Hachenburg spent many years promoting the use of telegraph lines to remotely operate distant musical instruments -- Musical Telegraphy, from the November 14, 1891 Electrical Review, was one review of his not-very-practical ideas, although, despite very little progress after more than thirty years of promotion, Hachenburg extolled his system as "An invention that in the near future will assert its importance as one of the great inventions of the age", and one with great financial potential, "For who would not pay an admission fee to hear this



electro-music?" A somewhat more practical device, although not a financial success, was Dr. Thaddeus Cahill's electronic synthesizer, the Telharmonium. Marion Melius' Music By Electricity, from the June, 1906 The World's Work, reported that it was now "as easy to create music at the other end of fifty miles [80 kilometers] of wire as to send a telegraph message". A second reviewer, Thomas Commerford Martin, was equally impressed, and in the April, 1906 Review of Reviews, The Telharmonium: Electricity's Alliance With Music reported that "In the new art of telharmony we have the latest gift of electricity to civilization". The Telharmonium consisted of a massive assembly of 145 electrical alternators, whose currents could be combined using a musical keyboard to create a full range of notes. Although Cahill looked forward to day when four concurrent services would provide electronic music 24-hours a day to subscribing commercial establishments and private homes, the invention ultimately proved impractical, in part because the high currents produced interfered with adjoining telephone lines. In the March 8, 1907 New York Times, Music By Wireless to the Times Tower reviewed Lee DeForest's experimental radio broadcast of a Telharmonium concert, but, given the extremely crude nature of De Forest's arc-transmitter at this stage, it could hardly have impressed Cahill, whose Telharmonium was lauded for its "purity of tone". The earliest experimental telegraphs employed multiple connecting wires -- in some cases a wire for each letter of the alphabet -- but over time simpler setups requiring fewer wires were developed. By 1844, Morse's line between Baltimore and Washington consisted of just two wires, one carrying the electrical current for signaling, and the other acting as a return line, to make a complete circuit. However, it turned out that even that could be simplified, and the return wire eliminated, if the sending line was "grounded", i.e. physically connected to a plate buried in the earth. The ability to eliminate the return wire was something of a mystery at the time, and the phenomenon became known under the misnomer of the "ground return", since it was incorrectly thought that the return electrical current was somehow flowing through the ground all the way back to the sending location. Actually, the earth around the grounding point was acting as a sink, so the "return current" was not traveling any significant distance. However, this mistaken belief that "return" currents were traversing the ground for extended distances suggested the idea of signaling without any connecting wires at all. Investigating this possibility, disappointed experimenters quickly found they were unable to send electrical currents through the ground more than a few meters, which they found perplexing, given their mistaken belief that "ground return" currents were somehow readily traveling hundreds of kilometers. In 1860, the Steinheil's Telegraph section of History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph reviewed what was known about the seemingly contradictory phenomenon, finally concluding that "It must be left to the future to decide whether we shall ever succeed in telegraphing at great distances without any metallic communication at all." In the end, it turned out that there was in fact no way to send standard electrical currents for long distances through the ground. However, in 1895 Guglielmo Marconi would discover the next best thing -- groundwave radio signals -- which were radio waves that used the earth as a waveguide, traveling across land and sea to the "great distances" envisioned by Steinheil.



"This is the age of telegrams. The public is accustomed to the consideration of facts in the briefest terms."--The Science Record for 1873.


3. News and Entertainment by Telephone (1876-1925)


THOMAS H. WHITE

s e c t i o n

3

News and Entertainment by Telephone (1876-1925)

● Next Section: Personal Communication by Wireless (1879-1922)

● Previous Section: The Electric Telegraph (1860-1914) ● Home Page: Table of Contents / Site Search

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While the telegraph was mainly limited to transmitting Morse Code and printed messages, the invention of the telephone made distant audio communication possible. And although the telephone was mostly used for private conversations, there was also experimentation with providing home entertainment. In 1893 a particularly sophisticated system, the Telefon Hirmondó, began operation in Budapest, Hungary -- one of its off-shoots, the Telephone Herald of Newark, New Jersey, did not meet with the same financial success.

In 1946, William Peck Banning wrote that "historians of the future may conclude that if there was any 'father' of broadcasting, perhaps it was the telephone itself". After the invention of the telegraph, numerous inventors worked to transmit audio along wires, initially with limited success. The first to finally achieve quality sound reproduction was Alexander Graham Bell -- Bell's Articulating Telephone from the 1876 edition of the annual Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers introduced the invention to British readers. (This review noted that "one cannot but be struck at the extreme simplicity" of Bell's invention, and eventually home telephones became easy enough to use so that a four-year-old could operate one, as reported in "Children Cry For It" from the March, 1908 Telephony.) The development of the telephone in the 1870s and 1880s included adapting it to distribute entertainment and news. In the January, 1908 issue of Telephony, C. E. McCluer reviewed some of his early experiences, including hearing experimental musical concerts in 1876, which were transmitted along commercial telegraph lines for the entertainment of the operators on the wire, as recounted in Telephonic Reminiscences. At the 1881 Paris International Electrical Exhibition, Clément Ader demonstrated the transmission of music from local theaters using telephone lines. Ader's use of dual lines also introduced the phenomenon of stereo listening -- at the time referred to as "binauriclar auduition" -- reviewed by The Telephone at the Paris Opera, which appeared in the December 31, 1881 issue of Scientific American. Edward Bellamy's influential 1888


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utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (home music extract), included a future where, via telephone lines, individual homes had access to music 24-hours a day. A couple years later, an American Telephone and Telegraph Company executive, in Extension and Improvement of Telephone Service from the September 20, 1890 The Electrical World, reviewed efforts to establish a mealtime music service, noting that while there were problems with the sound quality, they were hopeful that "When we have overcome this difficulty we shall be prepared to furnish music on tap." While most were intrigued by this possibility, not everyone was favorably impressed, and in the same issue a reviewer warned of the potential intrusiveness of the idea, fearing "a vista of dreadful possibilities" that might "make incipient deafness bliss", in Music on Tap. Although most of these early entertainment and news efforts were experimental or one-time-only events, a few on-going services were established, mostly in Europe. The first permanent telephone-based entertainment service appears to have been organized in Paris in 1890, which used coin-operated receivers to listen to programs that mainly originated from local theaters -- The Theatrephone, a short notice in the June 21, 1890 Electrical Review, announced this new service. A first-hand account appeared in the August 29, 1891 issue of the same magazine, with The Theatrophone in Paris reporting that the innovation was "certainly more amusing than the weighing machines and pull-testers that so overcrowd our waiting-rooms everywhere". However, the most influential telephone-based service would be the Telefon Hirmondó, set up by inventor Tivadar Puskás in Budapest, Hungary, which began operation on February 15, 1893, a month before Puskás died at the age of 49. Two early reviews of this innovation appeared in The Electrical World: Telephonic News Distribution in the March 18, 1893 issue, followed by Telephone Newspaper on November 4, 1893. Two years later, a detailed review of its operation, The Telephone Newspaper, ran in the September 6, 1895 The Electrical Engineer, with the author noting that the service, featuring continuous news reports, plus entertainment, including original fiction sometimes read by the authors themselves, was considered "almost indispensable" in the capital, although "the idea had encountered considerable ridicule" at first. In contrast, in an early attack on the electronic media by the written press, the September 28, 1895 issue of Harper's Weekly opined that "If all this really happens at Pesth, and not in the moon" then "Pesth must be the finest place for illiterate, blind, bedridden and incurably lazy people in the world" and "it would not appear, however, that a telephone newspaper is of value as a time-saving device". Five years later, Thomas S. Denison's The Telephone Newspaper, from the April, 1901 edition of World's Work, reported in detail on a personal visit to the Telefon Hirmondó's offices. Frederick A. Talbot's article about Budapest's "newspaper of the future", A Telephone Newspaper, appeared in the August 8, 1903 issue of The Living Age, and in 1908 W. B. Forster Bovill wrote about a first-hand encounter with the service in a hotel in Hungary and the Hungarians: Telephon Hirmondo extract. Over the years, the existence of the Telefon Hirmondó was constantly being rediscovered. Why I Believe in Government Radio--Hungary's "Telephone Newspaper", from


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the October, 1922, Popular Science Monthly reviewed Robert B. Howell's impressions of the now 28-year-old service. In 1895, another telephone-based system was established, in London, England. A technical overview of The Electrophone, by J. Wright, appeared in the September 10, 1897 The Electrical Engineer, which noted that "one can sit comfortably at home in all weathers and listen to the latest comedy, opera, or tragedy, as the case may be, by the payment of a purely nominal rental". The service soon claimed Britain's Queen Victoria as a listener, according to The Queen and the Electrophone, from the May 26, 1899 The Electrician. In the October 5, 1901 Electrical Review, Electrophone in England reported that "the popularity of the electrophone is increasing", with a decrease of the subscription charge from $50 to $12 per year. The August 5, 1898 The Electrical World reported that the company was in the process of installing receivers at "the principal hospitals free of charge, beyond the cost of installation". And two decades later, the same free service was provided to some jolly chaps photographed recuperating in a London hospital, as reported in British Wounded Hear London's Favorites via Telephone, which appeared in the August, 1917 The Electrical Experimenter. In early 1923, there were reportedly around 2,000 Electrophone subscribers in the London area, and Entertainment by Wireless: The Future of the Electrophone from the January 10, 1923 London Times speculated about the effect the introduction of organized radio broadcasting would have on the service. Although a company director was reported to be optimistic, in truth the Electrophone service was doomed, and two years later its thirty-year run came to a close. Not that it would be unmissed -- years later a nostalgic review in the May 9, 1957 London Times, Theatre-Going By Telephone, remembered that "There was something very satisfying about listening to a live broadcast from a real theatre, by actors and actresses playing to and having contact with their own audiences" which radio and television broadcasting could not match. And in the mid-1920s a new service arose in numerous British towns, "wireless relay exchanges", where subscribers could listen to radio broadcasts, received at a central location, over telephone lines, avoiding the need to purchase an expensive radio receiver. When the Telefon Hirmondó was reviewed by W. G. Fitz-Gerald in A Telephone Newspaper in the June 22, 1907 Scientific American, its editor noted that the service had been in operation for 14 years, and "I have often marveled why a country like America with its amazing enterprise and development has not produced a 'Telefon-Hirmondo' of its own". However, telephone-based news and entertainment services did not prove economically viable in the United States. In the July 5, 1890 Electrical Review, Wanted, a Theatrophone had suggested adopting the Paris system in the U.S., including its five-minute news reports, predicting that "We should imagine that a similar venture would meet with great success in New York, especially with the addition of the news message service, as the craving of Americans for 'news' is known to be insatiable." A short notice in the March 23, 1907 issue of Electrical Review, The "Tellevent", announced the formation of a Detroit company to "supply subscribers at their homes with the latest happenings of the world, with special music,


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performances at theatres, concerts and churches", but it is not clear if this service ever went into operation. In his 1904 book, "Flame, Electricity and the Camera", George Iles noted the absence of audio services in the U.S., and suggested this was due to the impossibility of making a permanent record, thus "This is why the ticker, which prints the news in thousands of American offices and clubs, has never been ousted by the Budapest plan of a continuous news service by telephone." The most ambitious U.S. attempt to duplicate the Budapest service took place in 1911-1912, with the establishment of the Telephone Herald in Newark, New Jersey. A short announcement in the October 30, 1909 Electrical Review and Western Electrician, The New Telephone Newspaper, teased that "pretty soon we'll be able to flop over in bed mornings, turn on a telephone-like arrangement and listen to a summary of news from all over the world without getting up out of bed". In the September 9, 1910 New York Times, News Bulletins By 'Phone reviewed a demonstation of the proposed service given by company president Manley M. Gillam. On October 22, 1911, the Times further reported in Your Newspaper by 'Phone on the pending introduction of the service, and three days later the newspaper reviewed the first day of operations, in 500 Get the News by Wire at Once. The Telephone Newspaper--New Experiment in America, by Arthur F. Colton in the March 30, 1912 issue of Telephony, covered the hopeful introduction of the Telephone Herald, while Broadcasting in 1912, written by G. C. B. Rowe, which appeared in the June, 1925 issue of Radio News, reviews more fully its unfortunately short life. In 1912, the family of Roger Garis, then a schoolboy, subscribed to the Telephone Herald service -- he later remembered the "great thrill to pick up the small receiver and hear a voice telling about world events" which "was such a novelty that I could scarcely wait to get home from school and listen to it". Roger Garis' father, Howard Garis, was a writer, and one day Roger Garis was startled and excited to hear one of his father's "Uncle Wiggily" stories being read over the Telephone Herald -- the events are recounted in an extract from My Father was Uncle Wiggily. The elder Garis went on to write a series of original children's stories for reading over the Telephone Herald, forty of which were later collected into two books published in 1912, beginning with Three Little Trippertrots--Adventure Number One. It would be the next decade before individual radio stations began to match the full range of programs which had been available to the Telephone Herald subscribers. George E. Webb was associated with a variety of innovative telephone projects, beginning with the Tel-musici of Wilmington, Delaware, a pay-per-play phonograph service, where, as reported in Distributing Music Over Telephone Lines from the December 18, 1909 Telephony, home and commercial subscribers called a central office to request tunes played back over their phone lines. Webb went on to develop an improved loudspeaker called the Magnaphone, which he envisioned would be used for a wide variety of applications. A short notice in the September 21, 1912 Electrical Review and Western Electrician, Phonographic Music Transmitted by Telephone, announced that a recorded music service had been inaugurated by The New York Magnaphone and Music Company, while a review of the new










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service, Music and News on Tap as Bellamy Foretold Long Ago, from the September 15, 1912 New York Times, asked "Does it strike you as desirable to have the world brought to your ear, with no more effort on your part than the turning of a switch and the drawing up of a comfortable chair?" Edward Lyell Fox's Bring the "Talkies" to Your Home, from the August, 1913 Technical World Magazine, enumerated a range of potential applications, from basic public address systems for train stations and baseball stadiums, to a multi-channel sound system for movie theaters, and even as a remote speaker for audio sent over telephone lines from a central location for movies viewed at home. "Magnaphone" in New York Makes Pictures Talk, by Dr. L. K. Hirshberg, reported in the June, 1913 Modern Electrics on a demonstration of talking movies using the device, while a review of the Magnaphone in the January, 1913 The World's Work, The Talking Ticker, emphasized the possibilities of telephone-distributed news and entertainment, declaring that "There is a talking ticker now, a machine that will entertain and instruct you for twelve hours on a stretch with the gist of the day's political speeches, baseball scores, election returns, and any other news that seems important." But this apparently was another case where the technology once again fell short of commercial success, as the January 22, 1913 New York Times Public Notice--Magnaphone reported that the New York Magnaphone and Music Company was canceling a contact for running underground lines for its music and information service. While program services such as the Théâtrophone, Telefon Hirmondó, Telephone Herald, and Electrophone operated on daily schedules, on occasion the standard phone system was also used for distributing entertainment, news, and advertising. Scattered reports included:

● The April 19, 1884 issue of Scientific American featured a reprint from the New Haven, Connecticut Register, which reviewed an innovative system of providing continuous time signals to telephone subscribers. Moreover, as Time by Telephone explained, the special signals could be selectively blocked for persons not paying for the service by "an attachment called the confuser".

● Opera by Telephone, from the June 14, 1884 Scientific American reviewed entertainment transmitted to the King and Queeen of Portugal.

● Music Over the Telephone, from the September 6, 1884 Electrical Review, reported a concert given to surrounding exchanges in Dallas, Texas.

● Telephone News and Comment from the June 3, 1897 Electrical Review, which included a short notice about activities in Mobile, Alabama, including "'phone parties", where "a number of subscribers are all connected in one circuit, and can fire away as if all in one room".

● Church Services by Telephone, from the July 26, 1902 Electrical World and Engineer, which reviewed activities in Washington, Indiana.


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● William Maver, Jr's Widening Applications of the Telephone, from the February, 1907

Cassier's Magazine, which noted in some rural areas it was the practice for the local phone company to set up "general calls" for such things as "musicales" and regular evening transmissions of time, weather, news, and market reports.

● The Telephone in Opera and Church Service Transmission, by C. E. Fairbanks, which appeared in the September 10, 1910 issue of Telephony, provided a short history of previous activities dating back to 1878, plus an overview of current possibilities.

● In the February, 1918 Telephone Engineer, Indiana Company Gives News Service reported on the Greenfield, Indiana's telephone company's new "Telephone Announcement Service", which phoned weather forecasts, market reports and the correct time to outlying rural customers -- along with some commercial announcements. The magazine suggested that "This form of advertising will help the local business which some glittering display advertisement is now pulling to the cities."

● Church Service by Telephone During "Flu" Ban, which reviewed activities in Muncie, Indiana, from Telephony for January 4, 1919.

Setups for the widespread dissemination of election results by the Chicago Telephone Company were reported in both Telephoning Election Returns, from the November 21, 1894 Electrical Review, and, eighteen years later, Distributing National Election Returns by Telephone, by M. D. Atwater in the November 9, 1912 Telephony. The telephone also began to be used for newsgathering. The "Electrophone", from the November 21, 1903 issue of Western Electrician, reported that the London Daily Mail had used long-distance telephone reception to speed the text of an out-of-town speech into print. Meanwhile, the Press Associations, long the users of telegraph lines to distribute news items to their member newspapers, also started to expand into telephone distribution, according to News By Telephone from the June 20, 1914 The Literary Digest. There were even some early reports of the telephone being used for direct marketing, for example, an article in the September 12, 1903 Western Electrician, Advertising by Telephone, reported that a Fairmont, Minnesota store found telephone soliciting much more effective than "sending clerks or errand boys" to inform potential clients about buying opportunities. Canvassing by Telephone, from the December 10, 1910 Electrical Review and Western Electrician, reported about an electric power company's practice of calling potential customers at home, noting that "Regarding time of calling it is suggested that between 8 and 9 is preferable, owing to the fact that the head of the house is generally in at that time and a sufficient length of time has elapsed after the evening meal." But, happy as the companies might be about this innovation, some of the targets of their calls were not as pleased,



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according to Housekeeper Objects to Telephone Advertising, from the February 20, 1909 Telephony, as one subscriber complained that, because of telephoned sales pitches, "My telephone is far more of a nuisance to me than it is a convenience." The telephone was also employed in the political sphere, used for "get out the vote" calls according to Telephone Help Election Day from the June, 1908 Telephony, which suggested that this approach should be adopted by "all up-to-date political managers who want to reach the people in the right way and at the right time". Recorded political speeches were also played for prospective voters, as noted by Campaign Speeches by Telephone from the October 3, 1908 Telephony. In spite of the varied attempts to set up telephone-based news and entertainment services, none achieved long-term success in the United States. The major problem was weak signals, for until the mid-1910s there were only very limited means for quality amplification. In the May, 1916 The Electrical Experimenter, Hugo Gernsback's What to Invent--Tele-music predicted that "An 'industry' rivaling the moving picture business can be created when some genius perfects a means supplying telephone subscribers with all kinds of music". Actually, at the time this article appeared, most of the needed technical advances were already in place, for AT&T engineers, lead by Dr. Harold Arnold, had recently taken Lee DeForest's crude Audion amplifier and perfected it into a much more effective device, making possible more sensitive microphones, quality line amplification, and better loudspeakers, that finally made the establishment of home entertainment distributed by telephone-lines practical. In view of these advances, in the April, 1919 Electrical Experimenter Gernsback returned to the topic of entertainment by telephone distribution, predicting in Grand Opera in Your Home that individuals would now welcome "spending 50 cents or even a dollar for the privilege, and at that he would think he was getting it cheap because he, with his entire family, would hear the music in his own home without having to travel to and from the opera". But, ironically, the same vacuum-tube advances that made telephone-based services practical also doomed them, because an additional development, vacuum-tube radio transmitters, also made radio broadcasting practical, with the added benefit that programs could be more widely distributed at minimal cost. Meanwhile, Well Clay, blissfully ignorant of the radio broadcasting boom already beginning to gain momentum, mused in the July 9, 1921 edition of his weekly Telephony column, Sundry Snapshots Along the Trail, about the possibility of using telephone lines to distribute concerts to regional audiences. In later years, there were a few cases where telephones lines were used to distribute radio programs to subscribers. A prime example of this sort of hybrid system was developed in Fredonia, Kansas, reviewed by J. A. Gustafson in Kansas Company Uses Radio as a Developer of Revenue from the December 16, 1922 Telephony, and Radio Service Given Over the Telephone, by Thomas F. Gilliams, which appeared in the March, 1925 Radio News -- at the time of the latter article, the system was also being used to originate local programming, such as church services, avoiding the expense of having to build and operate a radio station. An article by Grayson L. Kirk in the May, 1923 Radio Broadcast reviewed a local telephone company's system in Dundee, Michigan, designed as an entertainment utility







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for Supplying Broadcasts Like Gas or Electricity. This review wondered "Who will say how many Dundees, all over the country, will be adopting this system of municipal radio within the next few years?", but the answer would be "not very many", at least in the United States, although scattered audio transmission systems would be continue to be used throughout Europe.

"Those who have read Mr. Bellamy's story, 'Looking Backward,' will remember the concerts continually going on day and night, with telephone connections to every house, so that everyone can listen to the very best obtainable music at will. But few persons are aware that a somewhat similar use of the telephone is actually in operation at Buda-Pesth in the form of a telephonic newspaper. At certain fixed hours throughout the day a good reader is employed to send definite classes of news along the wires which are laid to subscribers' houses and offices, so each person is able to hear the particular items he desires, without the delay of its being printed and circulated in successive editions of a newspaper. It is stated that the news is supplied to subscribers in this way at little more than the cost of a daily newspaper, and that it is a complete success."--Herbert T. Wade, Young Folks Treasury: Wonders of Science and Invention, 1909.


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1. Period Overview (1896-1927)


THOMAS H. WHITE

s e c t i o n

1

Period Overview (1896-1927)

● Next Section: The Electric Telegraph (1860-1914) ● Previous Section: Home ● Home Page: Table of Contents / Site Search

●

General reviews of the individuals, activities and technical advances which characterized this era.

Radio -- signaling and audio communication using electromagnetic radiation -- was first employed as a "wireless telegraph", for point-to-point links where regular telegraph lines were unreliable or impractical. Next developed was radio's ability to broadcast messages simultaneously to multiple locations, at first using the dots-and-dashes of telegraphic code, and later in full audio. Although "electromagnetic radiation" is the formal scientific term for what Heinrich Hertz demonstrated with his simple spark transmitter in the 1880s, in addition to "radio" numerous other descriptive phrases were used in the early days, including various permutations of "Hertzian waves", "electric waves", "ether waves", "spark telegraphy", "space telegraphy", "aerography" and "wireless". In the November 30, 1901 Electrical Review, a letter from G. C. Dietz offered "atmography" as the answer to What Shall We Call It?, but the suggestion fell on deaf ears. Spark, Space, Wireless, Etheric, Hertzian Wave or Cableless Telegraphy--Which? by A. Frederick Collins in the August 24, 1901 Western Electrician wondered whether the question might eventually become academic, for "In the distant future when all wire systems, both telegraph and telephone, have been superseded by the so-called wireless, there will be no confusing qualifying adjectives, for there will be no dual systems requiring qualification, and wireless telegraphy and telephony will be spoken of as simply telegraphy and telephony." So, what's the difference between wireless and radio? "There ain't none" -- both refer to the exact same thing -- explains Edward C. Hubert in Radio vs. Wireless, from the January, 1925, Radio News. In 1917, Donald McNicol wrote about the importance of documenting radio's "historical narrative", noting: "I believe it to be the duty of those acquainted with views and facts of its


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introduction to set [the most illuminating essentials] down for the inspection of the ultimate historian". McNicol's overview of The Early Days of Radio in America, from the April, 1917 issue of The Electrical Experimenter, covered significant events, articles, books and individuals during the period from 1896 through 1904, beginning with Guglielmo Marconi's groundbreaking demonstrations in Great Britain. (Included in this article are links to nineteen items mentioned in the review.) In the June, 1917 Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Robert H. Marriott comprehensively reviewed technical advances plus the struggles and character flaws encountered during early United States Radio Development. The transformation of radio, from scientific curiosity to a practical communications technology, was due to incremental improvements in a variety of areas. H. Winfield Secor traced the history of Radio Detector Development in the January, 1917 issue of The Electrical Experimenter, starting with the micrometer spark gap used by Heinrich Hertz, followed by various magnetic, electrolytic, and crystal detectors, and finally the very important improvements in three-element vacuum tubes. The U.S. Navy quickly recognized radio's potential. Following successful tests by Great Britain and Italy, the Navy Department's 1899 annual report noted that Marconi equipment would soon be evaluated, "in order to determine its usefulness under service conditions". These tests quickly convinced the Navy of the value of radio, and three years later R. B. Bradford, Chief of the Bureau of Equipment, reported that "There is no navy, so far as the Bureau is aware, which has not given especial attention to this subject". The U.S. Navy began to equip its entire fleet with transmitters, and also set up an extensive chain of coastal stations. Radio was also employed as an aid to civilian and military navigation, beginning with time signals broadcast beginning in 1905: U. S. Navy Department Annual Report Extracts: 1899-1908. The Navy's impact on U.S. radio communications would continue to expand. In 1913, numerous shore stations started to handle commercial traffic in areas where there were no private stations, meanwhile, naval leaders lobbied for a government monopoly of radio transmitters. Finally, in April, 1917, with the entrance of the U.S. into World War One, the government, led by the Navy, took over control of all radio communications for the duration of the conflict: U. S. Navy Department Annual Report Extracts: 1909-1918. (A book published in 1963, History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy by Captain Linwood S. Howeth, USN (Retired), is a comprehensive history of activities in the U.S. Navy through 1945). The United States Department of Agriculture also rapidly foresaw radio's possibilities. Beginning in 1900, the department financed some of Reginald Fessenden's early research, until the two sides had a falling-out. But the department continued to work, at times haltingly, to develop radio applications, at first for gathering reports, and then for distributing them over a broad area. The Agriculture Department was responsible for some of the earliest radio broadcasts, including weather reports in 1912, although the first transmissions were in telegraphic code: U. S. Agriculture Department Annual Report Extracts: 1898-1927


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"Homage is due to many rather than to a few. Many radio developers have received little compensation for their work in the past and they are not in a position to collect now. The public owes a debt to many people which it cannot pay. Some of these people need the money, others do not; some are dead while those still alive do not expect to realize anything on their past labors."--"How Radio Grew Up", Robert H. Marriott, Radio Broadcast, December, 1925.


United States Early Radio History


Articles and extracts about early radio and related technologies, concentrating on the United States in the period from 1897 to

1927

Thomas H. White

LATEST ADDITIONS (July 9, 2006) • Three articles in Personal Communication by Wireless, two in Early Radio Industry Development, one in Pioneering U.S. Radio Activities, three in Arc-Transmitter Development, one each in Expanded Audion and Vacuum-tube Development and Fakes, Frauds, and Cranks .

An assortment of highlights -- plus a few lowlifes -- about early U.S. radio history. Over time more articles will be added, to cover additional topics and expand on the existing ones. (This webpage was begun September 30, 1996, and was located at www.ipass.net/~whitetho/index.html until March 11, 2003).

Sections

1. Period Overview (1896-1927) - General reviews of the individuals, activities and technical advances which characterized this era.

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2. The Electric Telegraph (1860-1914) - The electric telegraph revolutionized long-distance

communication, replacing earlier semaphore communication lines. In addition to its primary use for point-to-point messages, other applications were developed, including printing telegraphs ("tickers") used for distributing stock quotes and news reports.

3. News and Entertainment by Telephone (1876-1925) - While the telegraph was mainly limited to transmitting Morse Code and printed messages, the invention of the telephone made distant audio communication possible. And although the telephone was mostly used for private conversations, there was also experimentation with providing home entertainment. In 1893 a particularly sophisticated system, the Telefon Hirmondó, began operation in Budapest, Hungary -- one of its off-shoots, the Telephone Herald of Newark, New Jersey, did not meet with the same financial success.

4. Personal Communication by Wireless (1879-1922) - After Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the existence of radio waves, some were enchanted by the idea that this remarkable scientific advance could be used for personal, mobile communication. But it would take decades before the technology would catch up with the idea.

5. Radio at Sea (1891-1916) - The first major use of radio was for navigation, where it greatly reduced the isolation of ships, saving thousands of lives, even though for the first couple of decades radio was generally limited to Morse Code transmissions. In particular, the 1912 sinking of the Titanic highlighted the value of radio to ocean vessels.

6. Early Radio Industry Development (1897-1914) - As with most innovations, radio began with a series of incremental scientific discoveries and technical refinements, which eventually led to the development of commercial applications. But profits were slow in coming, and for many years the largest U.S. radio firms were better known for their fraudulent stock selling practices than for their financial viability.

7. Pioneering U.S. Radio Activities (1897-1917) - Marconi's demonstration of a practical system for generating and receiving long-range radio signals sparked interest worldwide. It also resulted in numerous competing experimenters and companies throughout the industrialized world, including a number of important figures in the United States, led by Reginald Fessenden and Lee DeForest.

8. Alternator-Transmitter Development (1891-1920) - Radio signals were originally produced by spark transmitters, which were noisy and inefficient. So experimenters worked to develop "continuous-wave" -- also known as "undamped" -- transmitters, whose signals went out on a single frequency, and which could also transmit full-audio signals. One approach used to generate continuous-wave signals was high-speed electrical alternators. By 1919, international control of the Alexanderson alternator-transmitter was considered so important that it triggered








the formation of the Radio Corporation of America.

9. Arc-Transmitter Development (1904-1921) - A more compact -- although not quite as refined -- method for generating continuous-wave radio signals was the arc-transmitter, initially developed by Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen. Because arc-transmitters were less complicated than alternator-transmitters, a majority of the early experimental audio transmissions would use this device.

10. Audion and Vacuum-tube Receiver Development (1907-1916) - Lee DeForest invented a three-element vacuum-tube detector which he called an Audion, but initially it was so crude and unreliable that it was little more than a curiosity. After a lull of a few years, more capable scientists and engineers, led by AT&T's Dr. Harold Arnold, improved vacuum-tubes into robust and powerful amplifiers, which would revolutionize radio reception.

11. Pre-War Vacuum-tube Transmitter Development (1914-1917) - AT&T initially developed vacuum-tubes as amplifiers for long-distance telephone lines. However, this was only the beginning of the device's versatility, as various scientists and inventors would develop numerous innovations, including efficient continuous-wave transmitters, which would eventually replace the earlier spark, arc, and alternator varieties.

12. Pioneering Amateurs (1900-1917) - Radio captured the imagination of thousands of ordinary persons who wanted to experiment with this amazing new technology. Until late 1912 there was no licencing or regulation of radio transmitters in the United States, so amateurs -- known informally as "hams" -- were free to set up stations wherever they wished. But with the adoption of licencing, amateur operators faced a crisis, as most were now restricted to transmitting on a wavelength of 200 meters (1500 kilohertz), which had a limited sending range. They successfully organized to overcome this limitation, only to face a second hurdle in April, 1917, when the U.S. government shut down all amateur stations, as the country entered World War One.

13. Radio During World War One (1914-1919) - Civilian radio activities were suspended during the war, as the radio industry was taken over by the government. Numerous military applications were developed, including direct communication with airplanes. The war also exposed thousands of service personnel to the on-going advances in radio technology, and even saw a few experiments with broadcasting entertainment to the troops.

14. Expanded Audion and Vacuum-tube Development (1917-1924) - The wartime consolidation of the radio industry under government control led to important advances in radio equipment engineering and manufacturing, especially vacuum-tube technology. Still, some would look toward the day when vacuum-tubes would be supplanted by something more efficient and compact, although this was another development which would take decades to be realized.

15. Amateur Radio After World War One (1919-1924) - Although there was concern that amateur










radio stations would not be allowed to return to the airwaves after the war, in 1919 the wartime restrictions were ended. And the next few years would see tremendous strides, as amateurs adopted vacuum-tube technology and began to explore transmitting on shortwave frequencies, which resulted in significant increases in range and reliability.

16. Broadcasting After World War One (1918-1921) - Although still unfocused, scattered broadcasting activities, taking advantage of the improvements in vacuum-tube equipment, expanded when the radio industry returned to civilian control.

17. Big Business and Radio (1915-1922) - Once the radio industry finally became profitable, major corporations -- including the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, General Electric, and Westinghouse -- moved into the field. Meanwhile, in 1919, due to pressure from the U.S. government, American Marconi's assets were sold to General Electric, which used them to form the Radio Corporation of America.

18. Broadcasting Becomes Widespread (1922-1923) - Led by Westinghouse's 1920 and 1921 establishment of four well-financed stations -- located in or near Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago and New York City -- there was a growing sense of excitement as broadcasting activities became more organized. In December, 1921, the Department of Commerce issued regulations formally establishing a broadcast service. Then, in early 1922, a "broadcasting boom" occurred, as a sometimes chaotic mix of stations, sponsored by a wide range of businesses, organizations and individuals, sprang up, numbering over 500 by the end of the year.

19. The Development of Radio Networks (1919-1926) - The introduction of vacuum-tube amplification for telephone lines allowed AT&T to experiment with sending speeches to distant audiences that listened over loudspeakers. The next step would be to use the lines to interconnect radio stations, and in December, 1921 a memo written by two AT&T engineers, J. F. Bratney and H. C. Lauderback, outlined the establishment of a national radio network, financially supported by advertising. General Electric, Westinghouse and RCA responded by forming their own radio network, however, unable to match AT&T's progress, in 1926 they bought out AT&T's network operations, which were reorganized to form the National Broadcasting Company.

20. Financing Radio Broadcasting (1898-1927) - Soon after Marconi's groundbreaking demonstrations, there was speculation about transmitting radio signals to paying customers. However, there was no practical way to limit broadcasts to specific receivers, so for a couple decades broadcasting activities were largely limited to experiments, plus a limited number of public service transmissions by government stations. During the 1922 "broadcasting boom", most programming was commercial-free, and entertainers, caught up in the excitement of this revolutionary new invention, performed for free. Meanwhile, a few people wondered how to pay for all this. In early 1922, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company began promoting the controversial idea of using advertising to finance programming. Initially AT&T claimed that its patent rights gave it a monopoly over U.S. radio advertising, but a 1923 industry settlement paved the way for other stations to begin to sell time. And eventually advertising-supported








private stations became the standard for U.S. broadcasting stations.

21. Fakes, Frauds, and Cranks (1866-1922) - Unfortunately, some "misunderstood geniuses" are actually crazy, or dishonest, or both.

22. Word Origins - Reviews of the history of the words "radio", "broadcast" and "ham".

23. Early Government Regulation (1903-1946) - Documents covering early international and national control of radio.

❍ 1903 Berlin Conference ❍ 1904 "Roosevelt Board" ❍ 1906 Berlin Convention ❍ 1910 Ship Act (Amended in 1912) ❍ 1912 London Convention and 1912 Radio Act ❍ Selected Radio Service Bulletin Announcements (1915-1923) ❍ Early Government Station Lists (1906-1946) ❍ Radio Regulation by the Department of Commerce (1911-1925)

24. Original Articles - Writings about United States radio history, emphasizing the early AM

broadcast band (mediumwave). ❍ Mystique of the Three-Letter Callsigns ❍ Three-Letter Roll Call ❍ K/W Call Letters in the United States ❍ United States Callsign Policies ❍ U.S. Special Land Stations: Overview ❍ U.S. Special Land Stations: 1913-1921 Recap ❍ Building the Broadcast Band ❍ United States Pioneer Broadcast Service Stations ❍ U.S. Pioneer Broadcast Service Stations: Actions Through June, 1922 ❍ United States Temporary Broadcast Station Grants: 1922-1928 ❍ Early Commerce Department Records: Examples ❍ Kilohertz-to-Meters Conversion Charts ❍ Washington D.C. AM Station History ❍ Extraterrestrial DX Circa 1924: "Will We Talk to Mars in August?" ❍ The International Radio Week Tests ❍ "Battle of the Century": The WJY Story

Search within EarlyRadioHistory.us:







E-mail: [email protected] Sarnoff, 1964: "The computer will become the hub of a vast network of remote data stations and information banks feeding into the machine at a transmission rate of a billion or more bits of information a second. Laser channels will vastly increase both data capacity and the speeds with which it will be transmitted. Eventually, a global communications network handling voice, data and facsimile will instantly link man to machine--or machine to machine--by land, air, underwater, and space circuits. [The computer] will affect man's ways of thinking, his means of education, his relationship to his physical and social environment, and it will alter his ways of living... [Before the end of this century, these forces] will coalesce into what unquestionably will become the greatest adventure of the human mind."--from David Sarnoff by Eugene Lyons, 1966.


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A Semaphore Telegraph Station (1895)

The electric telegraph replaced most of the older semaphore telegraphs, but prior to the development of radio a few coastal semaphore links were still used for communicating with nearby ships. But even as this article appeared Guglielmo Marconi was developing a practical system for long-range signalling by radio, which would soon replace most of the remaining semaphore telegraph installations.

Scientific American Supplement, April 20, 1895, page 16087:

A SEMAPHORE TELEGRAPH STATION. WHEN a vessel passes in sight of the shores of a civilized country it is customary to communicate with the rest of the world, receiving the latest news, and in turn announcing any dangers to which the vessel has been subjected. The facilities for communication have been greatly increased by the introduction of the semaphore. The utility of the semaphore has been so widely recognized that it is difficult for a vessel to pass unperceived along any of the French coasts. The semaphore is naturally located on a high point from which an unobstructed view of the sea can be obtained, and is

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A Semaphore Telegraph Station (1895)

placed either on the top of a house or tower. On the pole are several signal arms and the station is connected with the national telegraph system. There are usually two signal poles, one of which is devoted to the display of meteorological signals which announce the probable conditions of the weather, the predictions coming from the observatories. These signals are made of canvas and are shaped liked cones or cylinders, so that they can be seen from whatever direction they are viewed. The cone as shown in the engraving announces the probability of high north winds. The same pole is used for the signals of the international code, which are made with the aid of eighteen flags. This international code which is used to-day by all maritime nations, is made up by grouping flags, four or more of which represent not only words and phonetic signs, but ideas and whole phrases. Unfortunately, the use of flags is not sufficiently rapid for long conversation and signaling becomes difficult at great distances, because the colors blend together, and in the case of calms or very brisk winds it is nearly impossible to distinguish the signals. It is to avoid these inconveniences that the semaphore has been introduced for marine signaling, permanent arms being secured to the semaphore, which give signals analogous to those on the railways or those of the old Chappe telegraph. The actual signals are made by three arms which are articulated to the pole. These arms can be freely moved to various positions with the utmost precision by the mechanism. Eighteen signals can be made by combinations of these arms, which correspond to the eighteen flags of the international code. As shown in our engraving, the arms are manipulated by means of chains which pass around drums which are turned by handles. The whole signalling apparatus is mounted on a platform which can be turned so as to permit of the signals directly facing the vessel which is spoken. Messages from vessels are transmitted to their destination, the charges of course paid by the recepient of the telegram. For our engraving and the foregoing particulars we are indepted to L'Illustration.

● United States Early Radio History > The Electric Telegraph

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Telegraphic Codes (1912)

Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail were the first to develop a dot-and-dash code for use with an electric telegraph. (Trivia note -- an anagram for "The Morse Code" is "Here Come Dots"). However, the original specification contained a few oddities, such as a long dash for the letter L, plus internal spaces within some of the other letters. So a more regular variation was developed in Europe, which was initially referred to as "Continental Morse", while Morse's original code became known as "American Morse". (A review of these events appears in William G. Pierpont's A Brief History of Morse Telegraphy - Part II). In addition, the United States Navy briefly used a third variation for radio, called the Navy Code. The Navy's version was based on its existing semaphore "Wigwag Code", where signalling was done by moving a flag to the left or right -- in radiotelegraph usage, the right motions became dots, and left became dashes. However, for radio use the Navy soon dropped its version and switched to Continental Morse, the reason, as stated by Chief of the Bureau of Equipment H. N. Manney in a 1905 report, being that "Experts in two codes are rare; to become expert in three is practically impossible for the great majority of operators." Eventually, Continental Morse became the world radiotelegraph standard, and was renamed "International Morse", while Morse's original "American" version mostly disappeared from radio use, although it remained the standard for U.S. land telegraphs.

Wireless Course, Electro-Importing Company, 1912, pages 113-114:

Lesson Number Fifteen.__________

LEARNING TO OPERATE.--THE CODE.--THE WIRELESS LAW.

IN the wireless telegraph, contrary to the wireless telephone which transmits speech wirelessly, it is

necessary to learn the code of signals employed in transmitting and receiving messages. The code is a series of dots and dashes, as they are called, composed of short and long sparks as liberated at the sending station, a certain combination of short and long sparks forming a code letter or figure. As an example, suppose it is desired to transmit the letter A, in the Morse code of signals. This requires that the sending key be closed or depressed for an instant; released, and again depressed for a period slightly longer, the signals sent thus, being known as, Dot-Space-Dash; or a short spark, no spark, long spark. Electro-magnetic waves corresponding to the short and long sparks set up at the sending station, are propagated through the ether, to the receiving station, where they manifest their presence, by short and long buzzes in the receivers, the various combinations being interpreted by the receiving operator. There are three codes in general use now, for wireless communication, viz.: the Morse, Continental and Navy codes; the equivalent dots and dashes for letters and figures in each code appearing on next page.

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History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph (1860) -- AP extract

Over 150 years after its formation in 1848, the Associated Press is still the dominant cooperative news gathering organization in the United States.

History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph, George B. Prescott, 1860, pages 385-387:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS OF THE UNITED STATES. The telegraphic news reports of the American press have, by their remarkable accuracy, and the enormous amount of matter daily presented in them, excited the surprise of the press of all other countries. A single issue of many of our metropolitan journals often contains three or four columns of telegraphic news, which, at the usual rates of tolls, would amount to at least $500, --- a sum quite beyond the ability of even the leading London newspapers to pay daily. By what arrangement, therefore, is the press from Maine to Texas supplied with every important event which transpires in any part of our vast country within a few minutes of its actual occurrence? Some ten years since the leading journals in New York associated themselves together for the purpose of collecting, and sharing the expense of telegraphing, the most important items of news from all parts of the world. A general agent was appointed to superintend the practical operations of the system to be introduced, whose head-quarters are in New York. Other agents are located in all the principal cities of the United States and British America, and in some of the European cities. Subsequently to the formation of the New York association, nearly all the daily newspapers in the United States became associated with it. Everything of interest occurring in any part of this country is telegraphed at once to the general office in New York, copies being dropped at all intermediate points on the route, and the other parts of the country being supplied from the central office. The annual expense of the press reports for the United States is about $200,000, of which the New York press pays about one half, and the remainder is divided among the different members of the association in other sections of the country, --- the larger cities paying the bulk of the expense, while the country papers are only taxed some $30 or $40 per month each. The larger share of the press reports comes over the wires during the night, --- commencing about 6 o'clock P. M. and concluding generally about 1 o'clock A. M., but not unfrequently continuing as late as 4 o'clock, and sometimes all night. We have sometimes been occupied in sending press news when the sun descended below the horizon and when it arose the next morning, having continued at our post during the entire night. During the sessions of Congress the reports are the fullest, and towards the period of adjournment the wires are occupied until a late hour every night in transmitting their doings. One of the earliest feats, after the extension of the telegraph lines west to Cincinnati, was brought about by the agency of the New York Herald, before any regular association of the press was formed in New York. It became known that Mr. Clay would deliver a speech in Lexington, Ky., on the Mexican war, which was then (1847) exciting much public attention. From Lexington to Cincinnati was eighty miles, over which an express had to be run. Horses were placed at every ten miles by the Cincinnati agent. An expert rider was engaged, and a short-hand reporter or two stationed in Lexington. When they had prepared his speech it was then dark. The expressman, on receiving it, proceeded with it for Cincinnati. The night was dark and rainy, yet he accomplished the trip in eight hours, over a rough, hilly country

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History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph (1860) -- AP extract

road. The whole speech was received at the Herald office at an early hour the next morning, although the wires were interrupted for a short time in the night near Pittsburg, in consequence of the limb of a tree having fallen across them. An enterprising operator in the Pittsburg office, finding communication suspended, procured a horse, and rode along the line amidst the darkness and the rain, found the place and the cause of the break, which he repaired; then returned to the office, and finished sending the speech. The expense of forwarding the speech by express and telegraph amounted to about $500. By the rules of the Associated Press, no journal can receive an exclusive despatch from any other points than Washington and Albany. The propriety of this arrangement is obvious, for if each member of the press were allowed to receive exclusive telegraphic despatches, there would be a constant rivalry to see which would outstrip the other; the result of which would lead to the breaking up of the association.


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Electrical Service at Harvard-Yale Football Game (1913)

The Electrical World, December 6, 1913, pages 1147-1148:

Electrical Service at Harvard-Yale Football Game Although electricity played a more prominent part in the reporting of the recent world's series of baseball games than in the football season just closed, it was an important factor in the transmission of scores all over the country from the Harvard-Yale game in Cambridge on Nov. 22. About fifty telegraph operators with an expert knowledge of the game were stationed on top of the Harvard Stadium and connected by Western Union, Postal and American Telephone & Telegraph circuits with many of the principal cities of the East. Newspaper service hot from the gridiron was given by direct wires running as far west as Chicago, and New York, Philadelphia, Washington and other places prominent in sporting circles kept close "tabs" on the pigskin during the historic struggle for its possession. Nearly 50,000 persons attended the game, about half

of whom were transported to and from the grounds by the Boston Elevated Railway, which, in addition to a large extra surface car service, ran four-car trains on a two-minute headway in the Cambridge subway for two hours before and two hours after the game. The largest number of telegraph circuits from the field were operated by the Western Union company, which had thirty wires in commission. Two operators placed in the players' dugouts on each side of the field kept the press operators in touch with all changes in line-up. The New England Telephone & Telegraph Company operated a special talking circuit from the side lines to the Cambridge exchange, whence the scores were relayed to all offices in the Boston metropolitan district.


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On the Allegheny System of Electric Time Signals (1873)

Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, 1873, pages 433-441:

ON THE ALLEGHENY SYSTEM OF ELECTRIC TIME SIGNALS.

By Prof. S. P. LANGLEY. THE necessity of a uniform standard of time for the railways of the United States is one which is growing into importance with the increasing extent of our railway system, and we are, ere long, in this country, to be called on to settle for ourselves a practical problem which has been already solved in England, and which is beginning to make its demand for solution upon the managers of our railroads. Although the introduction of the plan in this country has been comparatively recent, the number of American observatories which thus distribute time is so considerable that the most partial account of their methods, and the extent of their work, would exceed the limits of such an article as the present. In this, the only arrangements described are those in use at the Allegheny Observatory, with which the writer has become familiar from the responsibility of their initiation and superintendence. It is proper to add that, were he writing a history of the progress of electric time signals in the United States, other observatories which have before employed not dissimilar means, would receive earlier mention, and that his own part in introducing these signals at the Allegheny Observatory has been less the contribution of any novel device than an adaptation of what seemed the best features of plans in use abroad, their arrangement in a form adapted to the needs of American railways; and the supervision of their application to the wants of cities and individuals. In doing this a great number of ingenious devices have been examined, and if the system to be described appears to be one of the simplest, it has yet been reached only after much care in setting aside all which would not bear the test of practical trial. The subject was first specially considered at the Allegheny Observatory some three years since, and a plan was arranged for the managers of the Pennsylvania Central Railroad in 1869. Previously to this, however, at the request of some jewellers of Pittsburg, the time had been transmitted to their stores, at a distance of some miles from the observatory. The system now described has been in use for nearly three years, in furnishing the Pennsylvania Central Railroad with its official standard of time, and by it the time is now sent daily to Philadelphia on the east, as far as Lake Erie on the north, and to Chicago on the west--regulating the clocks on a number of minor roads over whose wires it goes, as well as on those of the principal southern lines connecting the Atlantic with the Mississippi. Thus passing, as it does, over several thousand miles daily, it is believed to be at present one of the most extended systems of time distribution in the world. The observatory is on the summit of the ascent, on the northern side of the valley of the Ohio, about two miles in a direct line from the offices of the Western Union Telegraph Company in Pittsburg, and rather more from those of the Pennsylvania Central, and Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, and Chicago roads. It is connected with these points by three independent lines of telegraph. One of these runs to the Western Union offices, and thence to the stores of a considerable number of jewellers in Pittsburg. This is called the "jewellers' line." The second, connecting the observatory through the offices mentioned with eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey railways, and also with Chicago, is known as the "railroad line." The third, consisting of a double wire or "loop," communicating with the city, is employed occasionally for the observatory's own messages, and when (as, for instance, in longitude determinations) it is wished to send sidereal time, without interrupting the regular transmission of signals from the mean time clock. In the

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transit room, in the western wing of the observatory, are kept the sidereal clock, by Frodsham, of London, and the principal mean time clock, by Howard, of Boston. On the escape wheel arbour of this, the standard mean time clock, and turning with it once a minute, is a wheel cut with sixty sharp radial teeth, of which those corresponding to the 50th, 51st, 52nd, 53rd, 54th and 59th seconds of the minute have been removed by a file. Near the clock is a "repeater," the circuit through whose coils passes through a local battery, through a second clock in the computing room, and then through the standard clock. Each wire terminates in a delicate spring close by the wheel just mentioned. While the extremities of these springs, which are shod with gold and platinum, rest in contact, the circuit is unbroken; it is opened by the minutest lifting of one from the other, and this is effected automatically by means of a ruby attached to one of them, and placed within reach of the wheel above mentioned. As each of these teeth passes, the ruby, and with it the spring, is lifted through a minute distance. (Not in practice more than one one hundreth of an inch, and usually much less.) Once a second, therefore, the circuit is opened during a period of probably less than a twentieth of a second, and as the wheel advances a tooth with each vibration of the pendulum, the armature of the repeater is raised each second of the minute until the 49th is completed. Since the teeth corresponding to the next five seconds have been filed away, during these seconds the jewel is not touched nor the circuit opened. The consequent silence of the "repeater's" beats draws attention to the fact that the end of the minute is approaching, its completion being indicated by the short pause caused by the absence of a tooth at the 59th second. This action is repeated in every minute of the twenty-four hours without variation. The particular second is thus identified, but one minute is (so far as the action of the standard clock is concerned) not distinguished from another. To do this is the work of the subsidiary clock in the computing room, through which the local wires are led, as has been mentioned. The subsidiary clock (made by Howard, of Boston) may be called for distinction the "journeyman," and its principal office is not to give the time but to interrupt the circuit, which it does on or near the completion of the 58th minute, closing it again about half a minute before the completion of the hour. When the circuit is opened by the journeyman the repeater is silent for a minute and a half; when it is closed, the standard is again heard ticking on the repeater, and the ensuing short pause evidently precedes the first second of the first minute of the hour. The time is thus wholly derived from the standard clock, and is independent of any other; the journeyman having no power to control or in any way re-act upon the primary, and being only able to interrupt the messages it sends, not to falsify them. The mechanism for effecting the transmission of the time is essentially that already described, but more is needed to insure against possible interruption. This may occur from several causes, prominently from oxidation of the platinum or gold contact surfaces, when the current must be interrupted while they are cleaned, if there be no other clock. To meet this contingency a chronometer of peculiar construction was made for the observatory by Frodsham. It resembles the ordinary marine chronometer in external appearance, but contains in miniature the apparatus for breaking circuit already described, the wheels being cut so as to give the same signal of the approaching end of the minute as the standard clock. The peculiarity consists less in this, however, than in a device by means of which it can be caused to gain or lose any fractional part of a second, or any number of seconds, without being stopped, and without any disturbance of its normal rate, except while the change is being effected. This chronometer is to replace the prime clock in the circuit, during any temporary stoppage of the latter for repair or adjustment. The mechanism which has just been described acts in connection with the local circuits of the



observatory--one battery being employed for the sidereal clock and chronograph, and another for the mean time standard. Any interruption of the main external circuits is shown at once by the action of a galvanometer in each, which makes an audible and visible signal when the circuit is opened. The accessory apparatus, such as batteries, relays, switchboards, and so forth, which are used in every telegraph office, it will be superfluous to describe here in detail, but before following the operation of the electric current, outside the observatory, it will be well to speak of the method which has been adopted as likely to ensure most accuracy in the time keepers which control it. The transit instrument in the western wing is of four inches aperture, and with it and the chronograph, observations for time are made on every fair night of the year except on Sunday, when, if complete determinations have been made on the preceding night, none are taken. The instrument is of sufficient power to follow the principal nautical almanac stars in the day, and these are used (or more rarely the sun) when the weather permits if the usual night observations have been missed. From three to six stars are customarily taken, the azimuthal error of the instrument being found from the observations of each night, after the other corrections are applied, and the results determined from the chronograph and the sidereal clock. The mean error in the resulting determination of the sidereal clock correction is from three to four hundredths of a second, but it cannot be assumed that that of the mean time standard is known within these limits, except at the time that the observations are freshly made. It may be desirable to point out where the system pursued here differs from that in which a few signals are sent at stated hours, as at Greenwich. In the case of the time ball, for instance, dropped daily by a clock at Greenwich, mean noon, it is customary to compare the mean time clock which drops it with the sidereal time a few minutes before twelve. If it (the operating clock) be slow it is caused to gain, and if fast, caused to lose an amount needed to bring it to coincidence before the automatic action gives the signal. The time of this signal is nominally exact, but in fact involves the variations in rate of the standard clock or clocks which are treated in the comparison as having their errors absolutely known. It is by no means meant to criticise this procedure, but to point out that an error must exist where the rates of the clocks are treated as constant intervals between observation, no less real accuracy is reached in the method employed here, in which (as the signals are being constantly sent) the signaling clock has no less nominal error at noon (for instance) than at any other hour. When the sidereal clock has entered its beats upon the chronograph, during the time of observation, the record is not interrupted until, the mean time standard having been put into the same circuit, both clocks have automatically entered their time on the sheet together, and the break-circuit chronometer has done so also. The sheet being removed, and the breaks of the transit observer measured, the comparison of the various clocks with electric attachments are taken by measurement on the same sheet, and the others compared with the sidereal clock by noting coincidence of beats by ear. The resulting errors of all are then determined, reduced to a common epoch, and entered in a permanent record kept for the purpose in the following form: (∆T, δt, being the usual symbols for the respective corrections of error and date):

Aug. 10, 1872. Time stars{η Herculis, α Camelop, χ Ophinchi, δ Herculis,

} A. E. F., observer.



At mean 9h

∆T.

δt.Sidereal clock, 7s. 32 +1s. 18Break-circuit chron. +2m. 22s. 18 +3s. 30Cron. 3242, + 50s. 05 +3s. 11Mean time standard -- 00s. 27 +0· 46

The mean time clock is here 0 27 fast by actual observation, but when the next comparison is made the following morning (at 21 hours) its error can usually be obtained only by comparison with another clock. If it be compared with each of the other clocks in turn, each, owing to the variations of its rate during the night, will probably give a slightly different, result--but supposing all the time keepers equally reliable, the probable error will be less, in taking the mean of the four, than by any single one. The above corrections for error and rate having been applied to the sidereal clock, a comparison is taken with it in the morning, and the resulting time of the mean time clock noted, on the assumption that the sidereal clock is an exact standard. The same comparison is made with each, after the respective corrections and rates have been applied, each being successively treated as an independent standard. The results will then be entered in this form:

1872. August 10d 21h

Error of mean time standard,--0s. 19 (by sidereal clock)." " " " 0s. 05 " break-cir. chron." " " " 0s. 11 " chron. 3242." " " " 0s. 04 " its own rate.

The mean or "adopted" error of the mean time standard is then--

-- 0s. 17________ = -- 0s. 04

4 In the absence of anymore absolute criterion the time of the standard in this instance is assumed to be kept four one-hundredths of a second fast, and this value is adopted and treated as though it represented an error determined by direct comparison with the stars. The clock will be compared again at 9 in the evening, and when this "adopted error" exceeds 0·25 such a change is made in the pendulum as will correct the error--not abruptly, but gradually during the ensuing twelve hours. It is of course impracticable to stop the clock and raise or lower the adjusting screw twice daily for such minute corrections, and many ingenious devices have been proposed for effecting the change without stopping the instrument. One of these, as applied to a chronometer, has already been referred to; another (employed at Greenwich) involves the use of a small bar magnet permanently attached to the pendulum, and swinging with it; and still another the changing tension of a long spiral spring, which connects the "bob" with the clock case. After considering many such plans, that adopted was the old one, familiar to most observers, of placing weights on the top of the bob of the pendulum, and then adjusting the bob by the screw till it runs with them approximately, after which a small increment or decrement of the weights will keep the



clock under control. This plan has the advantage of employing as an agent gravity, whose effects can be reckoned on with more certainty than electricity or the tension of a spring. In common with the others it has however, as commonly employed, the defect that when changes are made daily or oftener the rate of the clock cannot be ascertained, and that reliance must be placed at the times of comparison only on other clocks whose rates are undisturbed. The writer has, therefore, found it advantageous to use these weights quantitatively, by making them of a size such as to cause a gain of one second a day; 01 an hour, etc. Weights representing three or four seconds are kept on the top of the bob, so that their removal will retard the clock, if desired, to that amount. A record is kept in which the comparisons in the tabular form above given are entered, twice daily, the amount of the weights and the consequent rate which the clock so controlled would have had with an undisturbed pendulum being noted likewise. The barometer and clock case thermometer are also read twice daily, for the purpose of laying down curves representing the separate effects of temperature and pressure. Another curve, whose ordinates represent the algebraic sum of the corresponding ordinates of the first two, shows the combined results of both, for comparison with still another representing the clock rates. These are chiefly useful in the occasionally long intervals of cloudy weather which occur in winter. At such times the clock rates are obtained by interpolation from the curves, and "weighted" according to the degree of dependence on each clock before making up the final or "adopted error" of the standard. When observations are obtained daily, however, such precaution is needless. Those who are aware of the number of patented devices for controlling distant clocks by electricity, may perhaps feel surprised that so little mention has here been made of their use. Some of these are of extreme ingenuity and much promise, and the English patents covering such points are alone to be reckoned by scores. Plans have been submitted to the writer by which the clocks along any number of miles of road could be set right, and brought to uniform time in a few seconds, by the operator at the observatory, and these plans appear feasible. The arrangements adopted here, as the reader will observe, do not greatly differ from these employed in telegraphic determinations of longitude, and in fact a prolonged examination of very many ingenious devices for directly controlling distant clocks led the writer to set them all aside, and to employ methods not differing in principle from those in use already, for purely scientific ends, in most American observatories. Of the very numerous plans for controlling distant clocks that of Jones (now well known) appears to be the best, but even this is not quite reliable where the circuit is a long one. The clocks described have subsidiary apparatus enabling them to send controlling currents on the Jones plan, but thus far its use has been confined to the observatory, has therefore been hitherto done by the sending of signals, through which distant clocks may be regulated, but without employing means for their control, and though this is done over a very extended field, a brief description of it, under the three divisions into which it naturally falls, will suffice 1st. The supply of time to watchmakers and jewelers. The "jewelers wire" passes through the Western Union telegraph offices and the stores of the principal jewelers of Pittsburg. Beside each "regulator" is a telegraphic sounder, on which the observatory time is heard constantly ticking, and by which almost, if not quite all the clocks and watches of the city are thus at second-hand regulated. There is, in this uniform and recognized standard, everywhere accessible, a convenience to watchmakers, of course, but still more to the public, as the discrepancies between clocks, public or private, which cause so many lost minutes in the day to each person in a city, that their aggregate represents a large draft upon the time of



the business public, disappear. Applications have been received from watchmakers in neighbouring cities, and at a considerable distance from Pittsburg, for this telegraphic supply of time, which it has not always been possible to accommodate, but which have been welcome, as showing a public appreciation of the utility of the work. 2nd. The supply of time to railroads. The watchmakers and jewelers are in permanent telegraphic connection with the observatory by a wire which is devoted to their use--but distant cities, such as Chicago or Philadelphia, can be reached only by the wires of the telegraph or railroad companies which are too valuable to be exclusively employed for this purpose. The method used on the Pennsylvania Central, and Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago roads, will sufficiently illustrate the system as applied to railways. A special wire connects the observatory with the office in which the wires owned by these roads unite. In this office is a small bell, which is struck lightly every second, in the manner described, and except for the pauses to designate the minute and hour, continues to sound unintermittingly, affording to the conductors and other employés specially concerned in the time a means of ready comparison, even without entering the building. At 9 and at 4, Altoona time (ten minutes fast of Pittsburg), the Pittsburg operator in charge connects the main eastern wire to Philadelphia, 354 miles distant, with the observatory, and for the ensuing five minutes the beats of the Howard mean-time standard are automatically repeated on similar bells, or on the customary "sounders" in Philadelphia, and in every telegraph office through which the road wire passes--all station clocks and conductors' watches being compared with it as the official standard. After five minutes the clock is "switched" by the Pittsburg operator out of the main line wire, which is returned to its ordinary use. A similar set of signals, lasting for five minutes, is sent at 9 and 4 of Columbus time (thirteen minutes slow of Pittsburg time) to all stations as far west as Chicago, inclusive, in the main western line (of 468 miles in length). At Philadelphia the time is repeated to New York, at Harrisburg to Erie (333 miles), etc. As it is thus sent not only over the main lines from New York to Chicago (nearly a thousand miles), but over a number of subsidiary or branch roads too great for enumeration here, and which form in the aggregate a much larger number of miles than the main trunk, it will be observed that a considerable fraction of the railway system of the whole country is prepared for using a single unit of time; as, though the names of "Philadelphia time," "Altoona" or "Columbus time" are not yet abolished over that part of our railway system referred to every railroad clock and watch, and the movement of every train is regulated from a single standard--that of the clock in the observatory. The advantages of this uniform and wide distribution of exact time in facilitating the transportation of the country, and in enhancing the safety of life and of merchandise in transit between the Western and the Atlantic cities, seem to be sufficiently evident. The fact that the system described in this article has obtained the extension it has, within three years from its commencement, will, it may be hoped, justify the belief that its use has proved not only valuable to railways but an added security to the safety of the public. 3rd. Supply of time to cities. At present arrangements are in progress for regulating the principal public clock of Pittsburg (the turret clock of the City Hall about two miles from the observatory), which it is intended shall strike every third hour on the bells of the fire alarm, and probably also in the various police stations. As the mechanism for doing this is still in course of construction, and may yet be



modified in trial, it would be premature to speak of it, especially as its success has not yet been proven in practice here. The city clock will automatically report its own time to the observatory by a special wire, and it is probable that in controlling its rate from the observatory the "Jones" system will be used. The necessity of a uniform standard of time over the whole country, which was alluded to in the outset as one of growing importance, has not been further directly touched upon in this article, which is yet as a whole devoted to describing the means of meeting it. The evident tendency, in thus sending the time from one standard over so large an extent of territory, is to diminish the number of local times, and so prepare the way for a future system, in which, at least between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, they shall disappear altogether. A step in this direction has been contemplated by the managers of the roads uniting New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburg and Chicago, who have intended to use the time of the meridian of Pittsburg between the two extreme points mentioned, running all trains from New York to Chicago by this time alone, in place of using successively the local times of Philadelphia, Altoona and Columbus, as at present. Such a change would have already taken place during the last summer, except for an unexpected cause of delay, on whose removal it will be effected. The labors of this and of other American observatories are tending to the same important end--that of the ultimate adoption of some single time for the country east of the Mississippi, by which not only the railroads but cities and the public generally will regulate themselves. What point shall be chosen is of less importance than that some one should be used and universally. The subject is one which has hitherto attracted little public attention, but it does not seem unsafe to make the assertion that the causes which have almost insensibly effected such a revolution in England, will in a few years more bring it about here. Allegheny Observatory, Allegheny, Penn., Sept. 22, 1872,

American Journal of Science and Arts.



Distribution of Time Signals (1905)

The Technical World, March, 1905, pages 18-26:

Distribution of Time Signals

Many-Sided Activities of the U. S. Naval Observatory at Washington, D. C.--The Determination of Time, and Other Important Astronomical Work

___________

By WALDON FAWCETT

SEVERAL notable achievements and a progressive advance in aims and administration, have of late brought into

special prominence the work of the United States Naval Observatory at Washington, D. C. Though the youngest among the great astronomical institutions of the New World, this observatory unquestionably ranks with that at Greenwich, near London, and that at Pulkowa near St. Petersburg. It is but little known, however, to the general public in the United States. Though its unusual attainments have won the enthusiastic admiration of scientific circles throughout the world, it is less heard of than are many private institutions in this country. This is doubtless due in great measure to the fact that the object of the governmental institution is not the further discovery of the unknown, but the development and application of the known--the one purpose which, of the two, is likely to be by far the more beneficial to mankind in general.

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Growth of the Institution

The United States Naval Observatory was established in 1842, prior to which time this Government was almost wholly dependent upon Greenwich, Pulkowa, and Paris, and on college observatories on this side of the Atlantic. As early as 1833, however, there appeared a forerunner of the present magnificent institution, in the form of an unpretentious frame structure sixteen feet square, erected under the shadow of the National Capitol at the expense of Lieutenant Wilkes, an American naval officer. This small building was equipped with a 5-foot Troughton transit which had been manufactured in England early in the century for the use of the United States Coast Survey, but which was not needed for that service when Congress refused to authorize the establishment of a national observatory. The object of Lieutenant Wilkes in establishing his naval observatory in embryo, was solely to provide facilities for obtaining the clock errors needed for the determination of true time and the rating of naval chronometers then under his charge. However, the testing of all chronometers and other naval instruments used by United States vessels was found to be so wise and beneficial that the Secretary of the Navy speedily took it upon himself to give the little observatory official recognition under the title "A Depot for Charts and Instruments," and an officer was regularly detailed to look after the work of the institution. In 1838, there were made upon the young institution unexpected demands which in their fulfilment so demonstrated its usefulness that its future was in a measure assured. An exploring expedition in the results of whose researches the United States was very deeply interested, sailed for the South Seas and, in perfecting the plans for its work, the discovery was made that it was well-nigh essential to the accurate determination of the longitude of the places visited by the expedition, that corresponding observations should be made at home, in order to afford comparisons with the data obtained, by the explorers. The Secretary of the Navy turned this task over to Lieutenant Gilliss, who had succeeded Lieutenant Wilkes, the founder of the Observatory; and, under stress of the new exactions, an achromatic telescope was added to the equipment of the miniature institution. For four years, though handicapped by inadequate equipment, Lieutenant Gilliss discharged faithfully and accurately the duties thus suddenly thrust upon him, and won by his success the applause of many of the foremost astronomers of Europe. The most clearly defined development of this interesting institution dated from the time when, as a result of the object-lesson afforded by the work of Gilliss, an appropriation of $25,000 was secured. Even after this, however, the establishment continued to be known officially as the Depot of Charts and Instruments, partisan reasons preventing Congress from allowing it to be designated as an "observatory." The first site chosen for the permanent home of the institution was selected by President Tyler. It consisted of a tract of nineteen acres which had originally been set aside for a national university--one of the pet schemes of George Washington. This location was soon found to be unsatisfactory, owing to the fact that its proximity to the heart of the city involved almost constant vibration; but it was not until 1884 that Congress could be induced to make appropriation for the purchase of the present admirable site on Georgetown Heights, overlooking the national capital. Once the new institution was formally established, the Observatories at Berlin, Paris, Greenwich, and Vienna



generously made a donation of some two hundred rare volumes of the highest standard, as a nucleus for an astronomical library. With this modest start, the library of the Naval Observatory has grown until the collection now numbers more than 22,000 volumes and pamphlets, and ranks second only to that at Pulkowa. In 1874 the institution installed the largest refracting telescope then in existence--the famous 26-inch equatorial. This telescope was set in place just in time to observe the transit of Venus, which occurs but about once in a lifetime and which affords a valuable method of determining the sun's parallax--the baseline measurement for determining celestial distances. The present home of the Naval Observatory was completed in 1893. As has been explained, the site has a considerable elevation over much of the surrounding country; and the original site has been so extended by supplementary purchases of land, that the proper and essential isolation of the institution would seem to be insured for all time.

Equipment

The equipment of the Naval Observatory is all that could be desired. The dome that houses the great equatorial is a particularly wonderful piece of mechanism. Although exceeding six tons in weight, it is so perfectly balanced that its huge bulk can be swung round, raised, or lowered by one man without excessive effort. The dome rolls around on a circular wall so that an opening for the telescope can be presented toward any part of the heavens. The entire floor of the apartment containing the large telescope, rises and falls by means of hydraulic power, after the fashion of an elevator, thus giving easy access to the instrument in all positions. In addition to the 26-inch equatorial, the equipment of the Naval Observatory includes a 9-inch transit, a 6-inch transit circle, a 12-inch equatorial, a prime vertical transit instrument, a 6-inch azimuth, and a 40-foot photo-heliograph. The latter is used in the daily photographing of the sun. A feature of the equipment which is worthy of special mention, is the Clock Room, or, rather, the vault connected therewith, which was designed and constructed with a view to removing from all disturbing influences the delicately adjusted time-

pieces upon which dependence must be placed in much of the work of the Observatory. The clock vault is 8 feet square and 7 feet high, and its whole construction has been with a view to keeping the temperature very nearly constant throughout the year. In the vault is a frame structure of the dimensions above given; and, inclosing this, is a 9-inch brick wall. Between the frame and brick construction there is an air space of 12 inches which contains hot-water pipes for heating. The entire structure is closely roofed with boards, inclosing a 6-inch layer of asbestos wool. The vault contains three brick piers for clocks, and one smaller pier for mounting a pendulum apparatus designed for testing the minor irregularities of clock rates. The vault is provided with triple doors and with means for slow ventilation; and, inasmuch as it is located on the summit of a hill, the drainage conditions are such that the basement containing the vault is remarkably dry, so that there has thus far been little damage from rust.



Time Signals Flashed

One of the most important functions of the Naval Observatory is found in the daily distribution of the correct time to every portion of the United States. This is effected by means of telegraphic signals, which are sent out from Washington at noon daily, except Sundays. The original object of this time service was to furnish mariners in the seaboard cities with the means of regulating their chronometers; but, like many another governmental activity, its scope has gradually broadened until it has become of general usefulness. The electrical impulse which goes forth from the Observatory at noon each day, now sets or regulates automatically more than 70,000 clocks located in all parts of the United States, and also serves, in each of the larger cities of the country, to release a time-ball located on some lofty building of central location. The dropping of the time-ball--accompanied, at some points, with the simultaneous firing of a cannon--is the signal for the regulation by hand of hundreds of other clocks and watches in the vicinity. The large telescope--which, by the way, cost $46,000, and has few rivals save the 36-inch Lick telescope in California and the 40-inch Yerkes telescope of the University of Chicago--is not used in the determination of time. In this work, only the transit instrument is used. By means of this latter piece of apparatus, an observer watches the movements of the stars on each clear night, and, by their aid, corrects the large Frodsham clock which stands in the Signal Room of the Observatory. In this phase of the observations, spiders' webs play an important part, being used to form cross-lines extending at right angles across the field of view so as to divide it into mathematical spaces. The web of the spider, it may be explained, is not only exceedingly fine, but of great strength considering its delicacy of texture. These nets of fragile strands also possess remarkable stability in another respect--namely, that they are not affected by moisture, and do not expand or contract as a result of changes in temperature. Formerly the directors of the Naval Observatory sent to China for all the spiders' webs required, it being supposed that the large spiders of the Orient produced the most desirable webs for scientific purposes; but of late years it has been discovered that the webs of spiders found in certain portions of the United States are equally suitable.



How Time is Determined

The time determination at the Naval Observatory is manifestly one of its most important activities, since the sun is irregular and cannot safely be depended upon as a measurer of time. The actual elapsed time required for one revolution of the earth on its axis can be accurately determined only by measuring the interval between two passages of a given star across a designated meridian of the earth--intervals which do not vary from century to century. This, then, becomes the basis of the work of time determination. It is, however, a foundation not secured without considerable effort, for the number of revolutions which the earth actually makes on its axis is one greater than the number of so-called solar days in the year as prescribed by the calendar in common use. Accordingly, the day, hour, minute, and second as determined by the stars are shorter than those of the sun as told off by our clocks; and consequently the time of the "star clock"--which is corrected directly from the stars by means of the transit--must needs be translated into solar time ere it can be of use to Uncle Sam's citizens in the readjustment of their timepieces. Time correction by the stars is in itself an interesting process. As an aid, the observer has the Nautical Almanac, a practically infallible time-table of the stars. This great work is compiled year by year as the

combined result of that careful timing of the days of the stars which is ever in progress at all the principal observatories scattered over the globe. By consulting the Almanac, an observer learns at exactly what hour, minute, and second the star under observation should cross the meridian. Taking his place under the telescope, he awaits the scheduled passage of the star. Precisely as the latter crosses the imaginary line, the observer presses a telegraph key, and the exact time of passage is accurately registered by the chronograph. This instrument, in popular parlance, might be compared to a clock with a revolving cylinder of paper for a dial. Moving over this paper, instead of a second hand, is a fountain pen which answers the electrical impulse by making a mark on the paper cylinder at the exact instant that the circuit is closed. The "star clock" whose inaccuracies are thus determined at such cost of time and labor, is never literally set right. Allowance is merely made in subsequent calculations for any errors which may have been discovered, these errors amounting only to an infinitesimal part of a second in many days.



The translation and transmission of the correct time from the star clock to the clocks which are directly responsible for the sending of the time signal, is accomplished by mechanical methods very similar to those already referred to. The paper-covered cylinder of the recording device is made to revolve at a fixed speed, passing under a stationary pen loaded with red ink. Behind the dial in each clock, marking the seconds, is a cogged wheel each cog of which in turn touches a brass spring, thereby closing the circuit of a battery, and, by a mechanical arrangement, causing the pen above mentioned to make a horizontal mark on the paper enveloping the cylinder. This affords a permanent record of each second. The star clock is also in circuit with the recording pen. A cup of mercury resting in the clock is connected with one pole of the battery. The pendulum is connected with the other. As the latter swings, it touches the mercury in the cup, closing the circuit and sending an electric impulse which causes the pen to do its work. It is comparatively easy to set one of the ordinary clocks within a second of the star clock; but an adjustment of a fraction of a second requires measurements of great nicety. Corrections such as above described are made a comparatively short time before noon, so that there will be little opportunity for the clocks to gain or lose before the time at which the all-important signal is dispatched. The clocks which contain the mechanism for sending the time signal, cost upwards of $800 each. As a precaution against accident, two of these clocks are provided; but only one is used in sending the signal. At three and a-quarter minutes before noon, the signal clock is switched into the telegraph circuit which covers the entire country; and from that moment until the sending of the signal, all business is suspended throughout the 350,000 miles of telegraph lines over which it is to be flashed. Warnings of the approach of the time signal precede by short intervals the actual announcement of the noon hour. These warnings are in part sent automatically. The signal clock is fitted with a toothed wheel which is located directly behind the wheel that marks the seconds, and which is divided into sixty spaces corresponding to the seconds in a minute. However, the tooth representing the twenty-ninth second is missing; and so, likewise, are those representing the fifty-fifth to the fifty-ninth second, respectively. As the wheel revolves, the teeth come in contact with a spring which is in connection with the electric current, closing the circuit and causing the sounder to respond. The absence of the twenty-ninth tooth causes the twenty-ninth signal to be omitted, and indicates the approach of a half-minute; and then the skipping of the five beats announces the approaching conclusion of the minute. All this takes place in the next to the last minute of the final hour. There is a third warning interval of twenty seconds before the supreme signal; but this is produced not automatically but by the telegraph operator at the Observatory, and occurs when he moves the switch key which throws out of the circuit the wheel marking the seconds, and throws into the circuit the wheel marking the minutes.



In the final one-hundredth of the last second of the fifty-ninth minute of the last hour at Washington, the tooth of the minute wheel touches the spring which closes the circuit. Simultaneously, the announcement is flashed to every part of the country, the flow of the current serving of itself to release the time-balls which have shortly before been hoisted to the tops of the staffs in various cities. How rapidly the signal travels may be appreciated from the fact that it is flashed from Washington to San Francisco in one-fifth of a second. Since the time signal is sent out from Washington at noon, or at 12 o'clock standard Eastern time, and there are four different standard times in the United States, determined by geographical locations, it will be appreciated that the signal from

Washington will reach the Central, Mountain, and Pacific Time Belts at 11 o'clock, 10 o'clock, and 9 o'clock A. M., respectively. On the last night of the year, the time signal--which in this instance marks the advent of the New Year--is sent entirely around the world, traveling over 1,180,000 miles of wire and cables, and making the circuit of the globe in ten seconds. Yet another phase of the activities of the Naval Observatory is found in the regulation of all the chronometers of the Navy. How important is this duty, may be appreciated from the fact that a second of error in a ship's chronometer at the equator means a variation of more than sixteen miles east or west of the mariner's calculation of his position.

Photographing the Sun

In the photographing of the sun to which reference has previously been made, extreme care and skill are required, it being necessary to use extremely delicate plates and to develop them by special methods. Considerably more than one hundred photographs of the sun are made each year. The camera with which the sun is photographed has a triangular box 35 feet in length. The lens is five inches in diameter, and has a focal length of forty feet. The shutter travels across a six-inch opening. The negatives, which are taken on every clear day in the year, are carefully filed for reference, and are measured with the greatest accuracy in order to show the changing positions of the sun spots, their sizes, shapes, etc.



Within a Tick of the News (1914)

Technical World Magazine, April, 1914, pages 262-264:

WITHIN A TICK OF THE NEWS

By C. F. CARTER

BECAUSE the daily newspapers do not come out quite as fast in

New York as the New Yorker would have us believe, a most remarkable news bureau has been built up, which furnishes news to all down-town Gotham just about as fast as events happen. There is no time wasted in making carbon copies on typewriters or in having the copy set on the linotype. It is sent over the wire to each news station. Fifty years ago the word "ticker" was coined in a broker's office somewhere, and to the whole United States that name very quickly meant a device which printed hieroglyphics on a strip of paper, the whole unintelligible to the layman. Today the ticker prints its news on a strip of paper about five inches wide, in language that can be understood. To supplement it, messenger boys from the bureau carry bulletins to give more details on the stories which have been summarized and printed on the ticker. The organization is a wonderfully large and perfect one. Reliability being the fundamental feature, no statement is sent out without verification. Of equal importance is speed. Once a bit of news is secured, the point is to get it to subscribers with the least possible delay. Two editors are always on duty during business hours on the same principle that some ocean liners carry two captains, so that the bridge may never be without the presence of a commander. At the same big desk sit four expert typists who take news over the telephone from reporters. The Stock Exchange man has his own typist who is not permitted to leave his desk even for a moment without calling someone to take his place. For long-distance messages there are telephone booths equipped with typewriters and a slot through which the typist hands the message, a line or two at a time. From the typewriter, the item goes to the editorial desk where it is summarized and then passed on to the telegraph operator. Instantly the message is on its way to hundreds of receiving instruments in banks, brokers' offices, newspaper offices, hotels, and elsewhere. The "local staff" for this system of news gathering and news distribution consists of seventy-six reporters, each of whom is a specialist on some one subject. To each of the great railroad systems and each of the leading industrial concerns a man is assigned whose sole duty it is to study that one property and write about it. European news is supplied by a London company, which is the largest news distributing agency in the world, with correspondents all over England and the continent. For seven hours a day the news ticker spins out a moving picture of important events of the world as they occur. The "Street" always knows when anything happens long before it is generally known, because the "Street" is thickly peppered with tickers.

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The new ticker is merely a form of the printing telegraph, which has furnished more contributions to the scrap heap than any other invention. While inventors have tinkered at the printing telegraph for more than fifty years, less than five million dollars worth of such machines are in use in the whole world. Most printing telegraph instruments for long-distance transmission are to be found in Europe. The special form for serving individual patrons is also found chiefly in Europe. In London, especially, the news-ticker service is well developed--financial, sporting, political, and religious items being furnished to various classes who desire special fast service in news reports. The old service from the Stock Exchange was badly handicapped by a poor receiving instrument, but the machine now in use is a complete regeneration of the old device. Instead of weights and springs for motive power as in the first one, storage batteries that need renewal only once in eight days have been substituted. Instead of crow's foot batteries, a three-horsepower generator at the main office supplies the electric current that keeps the system going. Instead of a paper roll that ran out just before the news item

you particularly wanted came along, there is a roll that needs renewal but once in nine days. This paper is specially made for the purpose to insure uniform thickness, and absorbent, so that it will take ink readily. Also, the machine has been speeded up to double its former capacity, and its noise has been suppressed. The essential mechanical feature of the present news ticker is a type wheel, bearing on its periphery the letters of the alphabet. The wheel revolves in one direction only. The sending machine has a keyboard like a typewriter with a key for each letter connected with tiny electric motor. The pressure of a key stops all the type wheels on all the receiving instruments at the corresponding letter while a bar presses the paper against the type, thus making the impression. When the key is released, the wheel automatically slides along on its shaft one space. At the end of the line, the printing wheel is thrust back to the left side of the page ready to begin a new line, while at the same instant the paper is pulled up one space. The printed lines are five and one-quarter inches long. The service gives out news to the "Street" where it is most needed, for without an up-to-the-minute knowledge of what the outside world is doing, rumor is much more likely to affect the sensitive market. The newspapers with their hourly editions do not come often enough. The news must come hotter and faster than these possibly can.





Receiving News of the "Titanic" Disaster Over the Electric News Tape System (1912)

This photograph shows individuals receiving information from a printing telegraph ("ticker") about the sinking of the Titanic, which occurred in April, 1912.

Our Wonder World -- Volume Two: Invention and Industry, 1914, page 73:


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History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph (1860) -- Meeting extract


A NOVEL MEETING. In accordance with a previous arrangement, the employés of the American Telegraph Company's lines between Boston and Calais, Maine, held a meeting by telegraph, after the business of the line was concluded for the day, to take action upon the resignation of Asa F. Woodman, Esq., Superintendent. Thirty-three offices were represented, scattered over a circuit of seven hundred miles. Speeches were made by Messrs. Palmer and Milliken of Boston, Hayes of Great Falls, Smith of Portland, Bedlow of Bangor, Black of Calais, and others. Each speaker wrote with his key what he had to say, and all the offices upon the line received his remarks at the same moment, thus annihilating space and time, and bringing the different parties, in effect, as near to each other as though they were in the same room, although actually separated by hundreds of miles. After passing appropriate resolutions, the meeting was adjourned in great harmony and kindly feeling, having been in session about an hour. An account of the above meeting having been published in the newspapers, Punch makes the following humorous suggestions, which are equally applicable to our Congress : --- "Now, why could n't our Parliamentary proceedings be conducted in an equally silent manner? Do you think Cobden would unwind his many miles of Manchester yarns without an audience? Do you fancy Spooner would go on raving for hours when there was not a soul present to hear him rave? And is it likely that Gladstone, even, with all his love of talking, would talk incessantly when all that his eloquence could possibly bring round was a dial? Now an electric Parliament would remedy all the evils that verbiage at present inflicts on the patience of the nation. A member of Parliament would be able to attend to his legislative duties without stirring from his country-seat. The entire business of St. Stephen's might be conducted in a telegraph office. The whole Parliamentary staff, with its numerous bundles of rods and sticks, might be cut down into a Speaker. That worthy functionary would sit in the middle of his office, like a forewoman in a milliner's workshop, watching the numerous needles flying assiduously around him. When the work was done, he would collect the stuff and report the result. The threads of the various arguments would run into his hands, and it would be for him to sort them. His decisions would be final, and justly so, as he would always have the debates at his finger-ends. The Prime Minister or Prince Albert might look in every quarter of an hour to see that the Speaker had not fallen asleep. "Under our improved plan, one great benefit would unquestionably be gained. There would be no noise! All zoölogical exhibitions would be effectually closed. Your Parliamentary cocks, donkeys, and laughing hyena would be peremptorily shut up, like their wooden prototypes in a boy's Noah's ark. Really, we see no obstacle in the way of an Electric Parliament. It would, to a great extent, cure the absurd mania for talking, and, moreover, we do not think the speeches there would be half so wire-drawn as they are now. Besides, every little Demosthenes, who at present is not reported, or else snubbed under the obscure cognomen of the 'Hon. Member,' would have the satisfaction of knowing that his speech had gone to the length, at all events, of one line, and, if he were at some distant post, it might run perhaps to the extent of four or five lines, according to the number of wires on the different telegraphs; whilst your Drummonds and your Osbornes, as they indulged in their electric facetiæ, might flatter themselves with the belief that they were fairly convulsing the poles with laughter."

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History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph (1860) -- Meeting extract


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Amateur Number One--Telegraph extracts (1917)

In this extract from the full article, Irving Vermilya reviews how, beginning in 1903 at the age of 13, he helped set up an extensive private telegraph line in his hometown of Mount Vernon, New York. In order to use the line, individuals had to learn to send the dots-and-dashes of Morse code, and also interpret the clicks of the telegraph receiver. (The receiver clicks were loud enough to be heard throughout a room, so you could constantly monitor the traffic on the line.) By around 1907, this telegraph setup had been extended to 42 locations, forming a kind of party line, where everyone connected could listen in as they wished to the two-way telegraphic conversations.

QST, February, 1917, pages 10-12:

Amateur Number One

By Irving Vermilya For about a year I plugged away at the Morse code--determined that I was going to be an operator any way. I got another fellow, Fred Skinner, interested in the regular telegraph line, and April 8, 1903, we stretched our first line between our houses, Progress was slow, until one day, the nurse girl who took care of my younger brother, came home with a new fellow--a telegraph operator. Well, I thought "Three cheers, I'm going to get this fellow to stick around." I sang his praises to our nurse, told her what a good scout he was, etc. etc. Finally he brought two new telegraph instruments,--a brand new 150 ohms resistance main line sounders and keys. We immediately threw our small four ohm learners set in the discard. In the course of time, this line grew considerably, as my many friends can vouch for. Fellows, it was some line. After three or four years, it had grown to be six miles long, and had forty-two different fellows and girls on it. It stretched from one end of the city to the other. It even ran under ground for a distance of two and a half miles. But such a wire! I'm almost ashamed to relate it. It was made out of copper, iron, brass, and aluminum. Some parts of it were insulated, and other parts were not. And not a soldered joint. We stretched this wire--(I say we, but it should be I, as I was elected wire chief, and for fear of getting pinched, I had full care of it) on trees, telephone poles, over trolley wires, and on back fences. Needless to say, the line was working day and night. Some one of the bunch always used it. It was the custom for every one to say "good morning" and then sign off his or her call letters, when we got out of bed, and "good night" before retiring. Some of the operators kept scandalous hours. In fact, some said "GN" after our early risers had said "GM" for the next day. So you see, some of the night hawks were constantly a day behind themselves. New Year's night was always great on this. We would hear some fellow going to bed at 8:00 a.m. next morning, after we had heard our other early risers say "GM" at 5:00 a.m. I always kept my instrument cut in, and thought nothing of hearing my pal, Milo White, say "GN" three o'clock in the morning. We always knew when any of the fellows had been out with any of the girls on our line, as we would hear them chewing the visit over after he got home and while she was getting ready to retire. Then the final "Well, good night, dear."

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We formed a company of all the members on this line, to help bear the expense, and held regular monthly meetings at each other's homes. Up to the time when we had about thirty-six stations on the line, we had gotten along fine as far as juice was concerned. I had all the batteries in my cellar-- eighty-three gravity cells. But, the question of juice was fast becoming a serious problem, as we needed more power to overcome the great resistance of our poor line, and instruments. We had a meeting one night, and after long deliberation, decided we would have to get a dynamo, or something. After the meeting disbanded, I called three or four of the fellows into conference--Conspiracy is what one girl called it--and told them that I intended to borrow some juice from a certain wire down on the corner. At first, they thought I was talking nonsense, but I finally impressed them that I was in earnest. Bright and early one morning, I got up and ran the wire down to the corner. I ran in a twisted telephone line, and put it up on real insulators, so that it looked exactly like a real telephone line. Of course when I came to our point where the tap was to be made, I continued the wire on up the street, so that it would not look as though it had stopped, and would throw any pursuer off the track. The line was run on telephone poles about ten feet above the wire we were going to tap, which also ran along the same line of poles. Being a good pole climber, I put on my belt and spikes, and started up the pole on which I had previously strung our line. When I got to the "feed wire", I took out some fine magnet wire, and wrapped it

around the feed wire, then I carefully cut a slit in the wooden pole ten feet up to where our line was, and made fast to our line. I laid the magnet wire in the slit I had cut, and covered it all over with putty. It would have taken a greater detective than Sherlock Holmes to ever dig that tap up, or discover it. The fact is proven by the knowledge that we had the juice coming from this source for two years. While I was up the pole however, I had two great scares. First one was a cop, who came down the street and saw me up the pole. I thought surely he was after me, but he evidently believed I was a lineman, as he passed right on under me. The next and greatest scare, was when the trolley repair wagon came along, and I thought surely the jig was up. I had visions that I had blown out all the fuses on the trolley line, and they were after me. But they too, passed me by without even looking up. When I got home, sure enough, there was 550 direct current volts waiting to be used. I then hooked up ten sixteen candle power lamps in series, and put them from the tapped juice to the ground. This just made them glow, so there would of course be no amperage pulled off the tapped wire. At the fourth lamp up from the ground, I made fast our telegraph line, and then Hurrah, we had plenty of juice day and night. After this, we had no further trouble no matter how many instruments we put on, and no matter what kind of wire we put up. It always went through.



One day, we had a particularly hard run of wire to put up, and had to pass by a certain piece of property where the owner was noted for being a crank. I went to him, and said "Mr. Taylor, may I run a telegraph wire through your trees?" "You cannot. No sir" was my answer. I thanked him, for I knew I was going to run it through his joint somehow or other, even if I had to hang it on the clouds. We couldn't have any one ordinary man stand in the way of this line now. I thought it all over, and finally got out one dark night, and tacked it all along his back fence. When we came to the end of his fence, we ran it under ground in a pipe, and then up the outside of the first tree, the other side of his yard. That wire is still there I'll bet, if his fence is. The fun began, when we had our next meeting after acquiring the "loan" of the "Tralla Lue" juice, as we called it. Only five or six besides myself were in on it. The rest still believed our batteries were giving the power. The city electrician, who by the way, was my cousin, was by this time a full fledged member of the line. His official job in real life was to have control of every wire in the city. He still holds the job. Now, of course, it would not do to let him in on it, and you can imagine what an uneasy feeling I had when he came to the door to attend the meeting. We got away with it all right, but had several narrow escapes. One fellow said "Say VN, you must have an awful bunch of batteries down in your cellar, that line is working great these days". Another fellow (the nurse's husband now) said, "Where did you get that dynamo VN?" Ye Gods, I was ready to explode. One fellow, Al Jenks, who was in on the thing grabbed up a 45 calibre pistol, that I always had hanging around loaded with blanks for amateurs, and yelled

"order". After plenty of storm and stress, and a tax for more blue vitrol for our batteries, the meeting broke up. I certainly was happy. My ease of mind was never perfect though, and I finally went to the Mayor of the town and asked him if he couldn't fix it up for me to get a little juice from the trolley. Much to my surprise, he did. He wrote a very strong letter to the Receiver of the line (it was in the Receiver's hands) and he in turn granted the permission. I was then quite happy, and that old line lasted until I finally moved away from the city. We made some great operators out of that old line just the same, and fellows, if you are ever near the Hotel Manhattan in New York City, call on Mr. Fred Coleman, who is now manager of the Western Union office there. You will never met a pleasanter man. He is a small man in size, but he certainly had a great big heart.



The Teleprinter (1912)

Electrical Review and Western Electrician, August 21, 1912, page 421:

The Teleprinter. Business offices, large hotels and other establishments in Berlin and Hamburg, are now subscribers to the teleprinter exchange. Each office is supplied with one of the new instruments, and anyone can use it to send messages to another subscriber just as he would operate a typewriter. Connection is first made through the central exchange, then all that is needed is to press one of the keys so as to start up. Other keys bear letters and figures, and at the other end a type wheel prints the letters on a paper strip. What is intended is to provide an instrument which any one can use, and without the training which is required by a typewriter. For this reason the keyboard has the letters placed in regular alphabetical order. Messages are received even if the case is locked up, so that no one but the person having the key is able to read them. When it is desired to send a telegram from a business office to the city telegraph office, this can be done by making direct connection with the telegraph office, as each subscriber can have a teleprinter placed there in the special room devoted to this purpose. Messages are thus sent and received directly and without any loss of time. Up to date there are over 1,200 of the instruments in use in Germany.


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History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph (1860) -- Music extract

Although the only audio that operators heard when receiving along Morse telegraph lines were the clicks of the receiver, in 1860 there was already speculation about transmitting more complex sounds. However, it wouldn't be until the middle of 1870s that the telephone would be perfected to the point that it would come into regular use.


MUSIC BY TELEGRAPH. It is an amusing fact, that music has actually been transmitted by the Morse telegraph, by means of its rhythm; in fact, it is of very frequent occurrence upon all lines. The following is related by Mr. Jones, who was an ear-witness of the experiment in New York : -- "We were in the Hanover Street office when there was a pause in business operations. Mr. Porter, of the Boston office, asked what tune we would have. We replied, 'Yankee Doodle;' and to our surprise he immediately complied with our request. The instrument commenced drumming the notes of the tune as perfectly and distinctly as a skilful drummer could have made them at the head of a regiment; and many will be astonished to hear that Yankee Doodle can travel by lightning. We then asked for 'Hail Columbia!' when the notes of that national air were distinctly beat off. We then asked for 'Auld Lang Sync,' which was given, and 'Old Dan Tucker,' when Mr. Porter also sent that tune, and, if possible, in a more perfect manner than the others. So perfectly and distinctly were the sounds of the tunes transmitted, that good instrumental performers could have had no difficulty in keeping time with the instruments at this end of the wires." That a pianist in Boston should execute a fantasia at New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and New Orleans at the same moment, and with the same spirit, expression, and precision as if the instruments, at these distant places, were under his fingers, is not only within the limits of practicability, but really presents no other difficulty than may arise from the expense of the performances. From what has just been stated, it is clear that the time of music has been already transmitted, and the production of the sounds does not offer any more difficulty than the printing of the letters of a despatch. It is well known that the pitch of any musical note is the consequence of the rate of vibration of the string by which it is produced, and that the more rapid the vibration the higher the note will be in the musical scale, and the slower the vibration the lower it will be. Thus the string of a piano-forte which

produces the base note vibrates 132 times in a second; that which produces the note

vibrates 66 times in a second; and that which produces the note vibrates 264 times in a second.

On a seven-octave piano-forte, the highest note in the treble is three octaves above , and the lowest note in the base is four octaves below it. The number of complete vibrations corresponding to the former must be 3,520 per second; and the number of vibrations corresponding to the latter is 27½.

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History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph (1860) -- Music extract

By means of very simple expedients, the current may be interrupted hundreds or even thousands of times in a second, being fully re-established in the intervals. If the pulsations of the current be produced at the rate of a thousand per second, the alternate presence and absence of the magnetic virtue in the soft iron will equally be produced at the rate of a thousand per second. Nor are these effects in any way modified by the distance of the place of interruption of the current from the magnet. Thus, pulsations of the current may be produced by an operator in Boston, and the simultaneous pulsations of the magnetism may take place in New Orleans, provided only that the two places are connected by a continuous series of conducting-wires. When it is stated that the vibrations imparted by the pulsations of the current to levers have produced musical notes nearly two octaves higher than the highest note on a seven-octave piano, tuned to concert pitch, it may be conceived in how rapid a manner the transmission and suspension of the electric current, the acquisition and loss of magnetism in the soft-iron rods, and the consequent oscillation of the lever upon which these rods act, take place. The string which produces the highest note, on such a piano, vibrates 3,520 times per second. A string which would produce a note an octave higher would vibrate 7,040 times per second, and one which would produce a note two octaves higher would vibrate 14,080 times per second. It may, therefore, be stated, that by the marvellously subtile action of the electric current, the motion of a pendulum is produced, by which a single second of time is divided into from twelve to fourteen thousand equal parts. The adaptation of this power to the production of music upon telegraphic piano-fortes at any distance which may be desired, is a matter of the utmost simplicity, capable of being successfully carried into practice by any one who has the money and taste for the experiment.


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Musical Telegraphy (1891)

Technical details are sparse in this review, but the inventor apparently planned to use telegraph lines to remotely and simultaneously play various instruments, such as pianos, placed at scattered locations. However, although he had been promoting the idea for over three decades, not even a demonstration system had ever been set up -- nor is it likely that one ever was.

Electrical Review, November 14, 1891, pages 172-173:

Musical Telegraphy.______

BY G. P. HACHENBURG, M.D., AUSTIN, TEX.

______ It is a matter of interest to go through an analytical investigation of the first ideas, emotions and circumstances that led the inventor to an important invention. His mental application on the subject of his invention from beginning to end is a process of evolution. His first plan may be crude and even confused, but still it may retain something, the nucleus, that may prove mighty and wonderful in results. No one can fathom this metaphysical question better than the successful inventor himself. But in connection with this question, how many take in the dawn of great ideas that point to great inventions, that cease their prosecution in one or the stages of their progress--sometimes even at the very point of consummation, and, therefore, may run amiss of great renown and even wealth.

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I would hardly be warranted to open my subject in this style if certain leading electricians of this country had not given me their favorable recognition of my musical telegraphy in a manner that led me to flatter myself that I am the pioneer of an invention that in the near future will assert its importance as one of the great inventions of the age. For years in the progress of my study on the subject, I held in high consideration its importance, and became more fully confirmed in this view after taking counsel with wiser and more experienced men than I claim to be myself. Prior to 1860 I presented the subject to the late Professor Henry, and it will ever be with grateful feelings I will think of that great man for the encouragement he gave me in this invention. So sincerely was he interested in it that he offered me the use of the upper floor of the Smithsonian Institute for experimental purposes, and I am fully convinced, if circumstances had been such that I could have accepted his offer, he would have co-operated with me to bring the invention to a practical issue. Of late years my correspondence with Bell, Edison, Blake and other noted electricians, gave me a further guarantee as to its practicability. Although receiving this encouragement in casual ways, I have my doubts if the full scope of musical telegraphy was taken in by any of these eminent electricians. The main features of my system of musical telegraphy are as follows: 1. The electrical connection of 10 pianos for concert purposes, to be operated upon by one player, either individually or collectively. This plan we recommend for immediate adoption, and in coming up to our expectations all other plans would be of easy execution. 2. The electrical connection of 10 organs for church music operated in like manner. 3. The reproduction of electro-music at a distance. 4. The electro-musical hall for operatic music, etc., where a great number of musical instruments may be electrically connected, or rather incorporated with the entire inside lining of the building. 5. Electro-automatic music, by transferring the music from an ordinary music box (properly prepared) to the 10 pianos. The expression of this class of music is governed by a key-board to be described hereafter. There are other combinations that could be effected, but the limits of this paper will not allow me to take them into consideration now--as of bells, glass and other metallic contrivances. An electro-bell music could be made very attractive. 1. To connect electrically 10 pianos, and to operate on them with the best effect, the combination has two key-boards. One that is adjusted to the instrument occupied by the pianist, and has as many keys as there are keys in the piano. By means of this key-board electrical connection is secured with any number



of pianos in the circuit. Not to impose new duties on the pianist in playing on these instruments, there is another key-board of 10 keys that is under the supervision of a musical director, who makes and breaks the electrical connection between the 10 pianos for the purpose of regulating the volume and expression of the music. The 10 pianos can be played upon simultaneously, or the most rapid run of notes can be secured without taking two successive notes out of the same instrument. By placing these 10 pianos in a certain position, the notes reaching the tympanum from different points gives the music a timbre that is both grand and peculiar. But why limit the number to 10 pianos, or 10 organs, and the small key-board to 10 keys? They are to correspond to the 10 digitals of the musical director. The pianist's manipulations in playing may be exceedingly rapid; such effort is not imposed on the musical director. His 10 fingers cover the 10 keys of his key-board, and by the slightest pressure of one or more of them the necessary connection is made. A more perfect arrangement between the cooperation of the two musicians, I believe, cannot be devised. It will be readily seen that the musical director is the head figure of this order of music, for it is he that (aside of all pedal action) gives it expression relatively with the skill he is able to command. When I explained this feature to Rubenstein, the great pianist, he demurred to the arrangement and asked: "Where is the individuality of such music?" I tried to make him understand that it must be sacrificed, if the music itself can be advanced. There may be an impression with some that this combination of pianos is characterized by much noise, like that of an ordinary brass band. Volume is not so much a desideratum as harmony and delicate expression. The ordinary expressions of a single piano are very limited; through the pedals there are but four, and they are very limited through the touch of the player. But, by a mathematical calculation, these 10 pianos have the range of 400 different degrees of expressions for each note. It is simply wonderful how these can be utilized. It is here the mysterious hand of electricity in a new role shows its power to please, where heretofore we only associated it with force and terror. It may be rather strange to state that the highest order of music to be effected by these 10 pianos is in accompaniment with the violin, flute or some other musical instrument, or even a brass band, and, in particular, with vocalization. The sympathetic vibration of sounds are well understood by scientists; but where modified by the laws of harmony, under different acoustic effects, as can be enforced by a system of electro-music, the result must be incalculably enhanced. 2. The main object in resorting to organs for church music is to diffuse the music and to destroy the emanation point where but a single instrument is used. The music would be in harmony with the congregational vocalization. A few concealed organs in the loft would greatly increase the effect. All the organs but one should be of a small size. 3. There are two methods in reproducing music at a distance--the telephonic and the instrumental--the latter being produced by the direct dynamic operation of electro-magnetism on the instrument in the distance. The former has been tested by several eminent electricians, but never with satisfactory results. The difficulty is in the loss of timbre of several notes in the scale of music. The telephone for the transmission of the human voice has the same defect, in particular with the pitch of some voices. In my experiments I have greatly remedied this defect by placing a small feather cushion between the receiver and the ear. I was led to think that there was a peculiar relation existing between feathers and electricity, believing that there was an "Electro-operation in the Flight of Birds" (vide ELECTRICAL REVIEW, April 28, 1888). The instrumental plan is the only feasible plan to reproduce music in the distance. This may be done by connecting the parent instrument with any number of instruments stationed at different



places. One practical utility of such an arrangement, aside of its novelty, is for a distinguished music teacher on the piano to instruct simultaneously many pupils at the same time, living in different parts of a city or even in different towns; and another, having the pianos connected much after the fashion of the telephones, for the exchange of instrumental music between musical friends. Of course, this would demand a central station, as in the telephone, and an "electrical attachment" to each piano. 4. The most extensive, as well as the most perfect, development of musical telegraphy would be in an "electro-musical hall" containing every variety of musical instruments that could be manipulated by the aid of electricity. The location of these instruments and the acoustic arrangement of the hall would demand the best attention science could bestow. This concord of instruments is not in general, if ever, utilized in unison, but to have on hand to render the greatest variety of music; or, rather, put in action such instruments that are in keeping with the nature of the music to be played. It is here that the musical director, with his small key-board, will prove the wonder of all. Is it possible that a little instrument in the bands of an expert can call forth such a combination of sounds, or almost like a flash cast warbling many thousand notes in the air? Who can tell where these notes come from? The muffled notes from the deep stone vaults underneath, the soft sweet flying notes from above, and a flood of harmonies from all sides, are often blended with extraordinary effects: sometimes falling on the audience much like rumbling thunder and then die away like the sighing zephyr. In this hall there is a stage, such as we see in the theatres; it may be occupied by the managers of the concert or the participants of the opera, a prima donna, or otherwise serve as a relief to the eye. If we are inclined to give the prima donna a pre-eminence with the ten piano arrangement, here she would be placed in an atmosphere of music, where every strain of her own voice would be carried still in deeper melody by this colossal but tender accompaniment. The poet may dream of the heavenly song from the lips of Israfril, but he may soon find her heavenly gifts a terrestrial reality under the mysteries of electricity. 5. Automatic music has never been popular, and almost invariably has been looked upon with horror by the musicians. There are very good reasons for this from the fact that all appliances producing this kind of music are cheap and miserably constructed. Perhaps the most acceptable of them is the best and most costly kind of the common music box. What merit the best of these instruments have is their action of good time, but their music is deplorably deficient in expression. To make expression in keeping with their time, so mathematically exact, is a matter that can be readily effected by transposing their music under our 10 piano system. The electricians can readily see how a music box can be so reconstructed that it will transfer its music to the 10 pianos, taking the place of a pianist at the large key-board, leaving the task to the musical director to give it expression that would mask every trace of its machine work. But there is one feature in this kind of music that is much in its favor. In complex harmony it would supersede that corning from a pianist. For, as the manipulations of the pianist are limited to 10 fingers, such a limitation would not exist by our electro-automatic music. This advantage would have its characteristic effect. It may be hardly necessary to state that the music box itself may be placed out of sight, and beyond the reach of hearing; or it may be of interest to sit close to it and study its tiny accords with the bolder notes from the pianos. Of course, each note from the two would be strictly simultaneously expressed, which, in itself, would be a source of interest. The expression would be nothing like the stiff awkwardness of a duet. To prepare a music box for this purpose the cylinder is cut into as many rings as there are notes in the scales; each of these rings is insulated. The steel tongues that produce the notes are insulated in like manner. Without going into details it will be readily seen by electricians how the music is reproduced in



the pianos from a music box thus modified. I remember in some of my lectures on musical telegraphy I spoke of a "musicometer" in connection with my invention. This instrument was something like a music box, only it was dumb, and the projecting pins in the drum were movable, that is, placed on a slide, and so constructed as to set them to play any piece of music on the 10 pianos. It was nothing else but an electrical test machine of any complex and difficult music; giving very accurately the time in music, but with the expression given by the musical director. As to the practicability and commercial importance of musical telegraphy there cannot be the least doubt. The only one that should now be constructed is the first in series. The pianos used in that combination require no reconstruction whatever, except the removal of the pedals. The cost of the different attachments and other incidental expenses would be less than $5,000; but let the entire cost be $10,000, it would prove a very profitable investment, where many hundred thousand dollars could be realized from concerts alone. For who would not pay an admission fee to hear this electro-music? As to the electro-musical hall, a considerable capital would be required to make it a success. But such a hall stationed in any of our large cities would prove yearly the Mecca of many hundred thousand. These are some of the outlines of my musical telegraphy I first fixed upon when residing in Springfield, Ohio, several years before the war. But what were the premises on electricity in those days to turn such a scheme into a practical shape. Then our knowledge of electricity was limited, at least so to the writer, although he had experimentally taken some interest in the subject before. In 1863, when on a temporary relief from my military service, I wrote out the details of my invention for one of the Cincinnati papers. In the excitement of the war the paper attracted but little attention in this country, but in some foreign land the act was accepted with interest, and its practicability acknowledged by some of the scientists. Godey's Ladies' Book, March number 1864, contains an extract on my musical telegraphy, taken from a London paper that shows that I then based my invention on the telephonic principle, to use a modern expression. I finally came to the conclusion that the telephonic plan would never be of any great service in music. To maintain the purity of musical notes, the plan was changed, by acting on musical instruments direct through electro-magnetic dynamics. On this plan everything now appeared clear, with not a single barrier in the way, to bring it to a ready and successful issue, without resorting to hardly any experimental work. To gain the attention of the public, and the electrical fraternity in particular, I made it the subject of a lecture I delivered in different parts of the United States. This lecture was delivered in the Crosby Opera House, in Chicago, April 9, 1869. It was then proposed, on the part of the audience, to make musical telegraphy a Chicago enterprise, with a view of celebrating the completion of the Pacific Railroad, but it could not be furnished to the Chicagoans in season for their jubilee. In 1871, through the courtesy of the Hon. Mr. Lord, of Rochester, N. Y., application was made to the State legislature for a charter to incorporate the Musical Telegraphy Company. At that time I lived in Rochester and took an active part in musical telegraphy rather preparatory to have it introduced at the Centennial celebration. I then proposed to issue stock, after $20,000 stock were ordered. The list was headed, ordering a liberal amount, by the Hon. Charles W. Briggs, Mayor of the city. As the amount was not guaranteed the stock was not issued. I had free access to the three principal dailies of the city, who from time to time accepted my papers on the subject. The nature of these papers was usually explanatory of the subject, and, as in this communication, nothing was kept secret. It was rather remarkably co-incident (as I was told afterwards) that Professor Bell lived in Rochester at the same time and was



working on his telephone; and I was likewise informed that Dr. Gray heard my Chicago lecture in 1869. In 1872 the subject was presented to the United States Centennial Commission, which met their favorable consideration, as can be seen in their published proceedings for 1872, Appendix 3, p. 92-3. February 19, 1873. I treated the subject in its scientific aspect before the Franklin Institute, of Philadelphia. About this time I went to Texas on account of my health, and had to abandon business entirely. Soon after I came here I received an offer from the Shoemaker Piano Co. that they would defray the expenses of constructing the "Electrical Attachments" if I would apply them to pianos of their make at the Centennial. I could not accept their offer, owing to certain conditions. In 1890 the manager of the International Electrical Exposition (that was held in St. Louis) asked me to make an exhibition of my invention. He promised material aid to get it ready for the fair. But the time allotted to comply with his request was entirely too short, and I declined to take action in the matter. It will take several months to construct the "Electrical Attachments" on the 10 piano system, and about the same time will be required after they are completed for the musical director to learn to control them with the best effect. When it was decided to have a World's Fair in Chicago I offered my musical telegraphy to the Commission on the terms I did to the Commission of the Centennial, asking them to defray the cost of making the electrical attachments for the 10 pianos. They received the offer apparently with interest and asked for many details as to the cost, space, etc. I am doubtful that they will meet my demands, perhaps under the impression that outside capital will bring it into the Exposition anyway. If we are forced to this alternative, let any State, city or electrical association accept the offer I made the Commission and place it in its own department at the Fair. At the same time it will have the faithful co-operation of its inventor to make musical telegraphy a prominent attraction of the World's Fair.



Music By Electricity (1906)

Although perhaps the first electrical music synthesizer, Cahill's innovation, generally known as the Telharmonium, proved to be impractical. The major complaint was that the generated signals were so stong they caused interference to adjoining telephone lines, which meant that regular phone users found their conversations accompanied -- or drowned out -- by the music.

The World's Work, June, 1906, pages 7660-7663:

MUSIC BY ELECTRICITY

THE INVENTION OF DR. THADDEUS CAHILL THAT PRODUCES MUSIC MILES AWAY FROM THE PERFORMER -- SETTING UP ELECTRICAL VIBRATIONS THAT BECOME MUSIC

AT DISTANT TELEPHONE RECEIVERS -- THE STORY OF THE INVENTOR AND HIS REVOLUTIONARY DEVICE

BY

MARION MELIUS

ALTHOUGH electricity has produced many wonders, they have been mainly of the workaday kind. Now an invention has

been wrought out that proves that electricity is capable of producing--not reproducing, but producing--music of rare beauty and purity. A visit to a shop in Holyoke, Mass. shows a machine that is really manufacturing music. Dr. Thaddeus Cahill, the inventor, declares that it is as easy to create music at the other end of fifty miles of wire as to send a telegraph message. At a keyboard of his device a performer--or there may be two--lightly presses down the keys, and at receivers, perhaps many miles distant, music pours forth. In pressing the keys the performer throws upon a wire a vibration--or a set of vibrations--which turns into aerial vibrations or audible music, when it reaches the diaphragm of a telephone receiver. The vibrations stand for notes and tones, and they scurry along to do their work the instant they are released. The performer is conscious only of the music he produces. He does not necessarily hear it. He need know nothing of the mechanical process he sets in action by the pressure of his fingers on the keys. Yet under his fingers the electrical vibrations act tractably and instantaneously. At will he turns an exhaustless supply of different kinds of vibrations to produce at a distance just the sounds he desires. Only those wise in electrical knowledge will ever understand just what has taken place in the Cahill laboratory, but in bare outline it is this: An alternating-current generator has been built up for each note of the musical scale. Each of these generators produces as many electrical vibrations per second as there are aerial vibrations per second in the note of the musical scale for which it stands. From the generators a mass of wires leads to the keyboards. The keys operate switches which conduct the desired vibrations from the generators, much as in a pipe organ the player, by pressing certain keys, turns the air from the bellows into different pipes to produce the tones he desires. These vibrations are passed through several transformers or tone mixers to become still more complex, and then the interwoven vibrations go forth on a wire. Although the process seems involved, the action is instantaneous. The performer presses the key which sets in motion a set of electrical vibrations, corresponding to a note, and in a thousandth of a second the note sounds with perfect distinctness and purity from the receiver, whether it be at the performer's elbow or many miles away. In the music room where the performer sits, there would be absolute silence, if it were not for the receiving horn placed near him, so that he can judge of the character of his playing. The vibrations do not turn into sound until they reach the telephone receiver. Yet the wires all the time are full of silent music, which could be distinguished if the ear were constructed to catch electrical vibrations as it is to catch aerial vibrations. In a small dark room close by the music room is a long box in which are 400 telephone receivers attached to the instrument but with their noses buried in sawdust so that their voices are silent. If a handful of them are dragged out of their sawdust bed, however, they sing out loudly on the air. The wires between the instrument and the receivers may be tapped anywhere to give forth musical sounds, and when Dr. Cahill completes his system, he may literally fill the world with a network of music. The possibilities of this new musical instrument are almost limitless, for not only can it produce the tones of almost all the known orchestral instruments, but it creates musical sounds never heard before. The tones of the different orchestral



instruments are secured by mixing with the ground tone one or more harmonics in the required proportions. For instance, at a touch of the third and fourth of the harmonic stops, which are located above the keyboard, something in the manner in which organ stops are arranged, the performer may change a flute-like note to the sound of a clarinet, or, by using all the harmonics up to the eighth, the tone may be transformed into a string sound. Another combination of harmonics gives the strident sound of brass. As a final triumph a musician can so combine the harmonics as to produce musical timbres unknown before. He may develop an almost limitless number of new sounds according as his patience and his soul direct. Electrically he produces the different musical timbres by mixing vibrations of different frequencies. The effect of a full orchestra is brought about satisfactorily when two players are at the key-board. One of the most remarkable features of the device is the delicacy of control. It lends itself instantly to expression, and responds more sympathetically to the soul of the musician than any other instrument, with the exception, perhaps, of the violin. It is as sensitive to moods and emotions as a living thing. The performer by a mere touch controls the various shades of the notes, and varies them at will. The three musicians who are perfecting themselves in the mastery of the instrument at the Cahill laboratory, find to their delight that all the varying meanings and emotions of classical music may be brought out artistically. To play electrical music a performer must have some knowledge of the piano and must be a thorough musician. So delicate is the instrument that listeners at a receiving station many miles distant may detect the difference in touch of the players. A Bauer or a Paderewski at the instrument could delight an audience ten miles distant as thoroughly as if the listeners were in the concert hall with the musician. The keyboard has two banks of keys, a row of stops to regulate the harmonics, and a few other devices which help to determine the expression. But there is not a pipe, a string, or a reed in the entire apparatus. Everything is electrical. At the receiving stations the device is simply a telephone receiver attached to a large horn, like that of a phonograph. The telephone receiver may not be held to the ear, for the current is so strong that its effects would be injurious. For, whereas a current of only six ten-millionths of a millionth of an ampere is sufficient to produce a sound in an ordinary telephone receiver, in the Cahill system a current of an ampere is sometimes used for an instant for loud tones. In consequence of the strength of the current, the musical tones are not marred by any of the noises along the line such as oftentimes seriously disturb the feebler current of the ordinary telephone. The invention is not in the experimental stage. The first commercial installation has been completed. The second is being constructed and will probably be placed in New York City as a central station for distributing music. The machine already finished is a massive device of metal and wires. It weighs more than 200 tons and cost $200,000. There are 145 of the alternating generators grouped in eight sections and the switchboards, including nearly 2,000 switches, are in ten sections. Music was sent successfully from Dr. Cahill's original laboratory to New Haven, a distance of 70 miles over a leased wire. In a Holyoke hotel, a mile distant from the central installation, where two receiving horns, have been stationed, a large ballroom is filled with the music. There is none of the rasp and harshness of the phonograph about it; its tones are pure, clear, round, and rich. By the very nature of the mechanism the instrument is permanently tuned. The most important feature commercially of the electrical music is that it may be produced simultaneously in thousands of places many miles apart with as much power as if an orchestra were in every one of the places. Several of the generators for single notes send out from 15 to 19 horse-power. Notes with several horse-power behind them naturally have no difficulty in supplying many receiving stations at once. All that is necessary to release the music at a receiving station is the moving of a tiny switch. Dr. Cahill plans to place the system at first in theatres, concert halls, restaurants, hotels, and department stores, but later he expects it will come into private use. In small towns where fine music is rarely heard a connection could be made with private homes from the central station in a large city and the masterpieces of music could be heard at will. The electrical music will go over its own wires and not over leased wires. Central stations will probably be not more than fifty miles apart, in order to get the best results. There will probably be operators or performers at the central station for twenty-four hours, and music will be on tap all hours of the day or night. An individual may go to sleep to music or rise to it according to his temperament, and a hostess may furnish an orchestra for her dinner party at the turn of a button. As the system develops, Dr. Cahill is hopeful that in due time there may be four sets of mains fed from the central station, each with a different kind of music, and by connecting the four sets of mains to a public place or a private home, rag-time ditties, classical compositions, operatic, or sacred music may be turned on according to one's mood. Dr. Thaddeus Cahill, the inventor, is a native of Iowa, but passed most of his youth in Oberlin, O., where he began his experiments with electrical music. Since 1889 he has lived at Washington, D. C. In 1892, at the age of twenty-five, he graduated from the Columbian Law School in Washington, the third in a class of more than a hundred. He was admitted to the



bar in 1894, and in 1900 received the degree of D.C.L. from the Columbian University. The study of law, however, did not dampen his ardor for scientific studies, and in the nineties he worked out his musical apparatus to a degree of perfection. In 1903 he removed his laboratory from Washington to Holyoke, where he has since been engaged in building the large machines as well as in perfecting and improving various details. The machine here illustrated is the one built by Dr. Cahill at Washington. It has a special interest as being his first complete machine and the first apparatus ever used to generate music by means of alternators. He built it in the late nineties, experimented with it for several years, and had the satisfaction of exhibiting it to Lord Kelvin at Washington in April, 1902.



The Telharmonium: Electricity's Alliance With Music (1906)

Review of Reviews, April, 1906, pages 420-423:

THE TELHARMONIUM: ELECTRICITY'S ALLIANCE WITH MUSIC.

BY THOMAS COMMERFORD MARTIN.

IN the new art of telharmony we have the latest gift of electricity to civilization, an art which, while

abolishing every musical instrument, from the jew's-harp to the 'cello, gives everybody cheaply, and everywhere, more music than they ever had before. There are so many fundamental and revolutionary ideas embodied in the invention that it will be a long time before we grasp or grow accustomed to them all and only one or two can now be accentuated. Electricity has been the greatest centralizing, unifying, force these hundred years, and the "tie that binds" is distinctively made of wire. The art of telharmony pushes one degree further the dominant principle of current-production embodied in the telegraph office, the telephone exchange, the electric-light plant, and the trolley power-house ; and it emphasizes just a little bit more the practice of drawing out from the circuit, at the point of consumption, just what is needed for intelligence, communication, illumination, heat, traction, and what not. For such service the

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American people spent, last year, one billion dollars, and now it is going to add its music bill to that modest sum, because there will be economy and gain in it.

ELECTRIC WAVES OF MUSICAL SOUND.

That the sounds of music can be transmitted over a line wire is nothing novel. In a rudimentary way, the systems of harmonic telegraphy based on tuned "reeds" point the way ; and the very earliest work in telephony in Europe and America dealt rather with music than with speech. Many of us have laid our ear-flaps over a telephone receiver and listened to music transmitted from a distant opera house or concert hall or church ; and some of us have even seen a rollicking phonograph cylinder, in New York, sing songs and "A Life on the Ocean Wave" with the purpose of dispelling the dull gloom in distant Philadelphia. All of this was excellently well ; but in each instance the music received and delivered came, triturated and emasculated by the trip, from an instrument. In the Cahill telharmonium we have changed all that, and we enter a pure democracy of musical electrical waves from among which, at will, those that please us best can be selected, to give us any tune or tone or timbre that we want. This all reads wildly extravagant, but it is the cold statement of a bald fact. The new system of telharmony has need neither of sounding brass nor of twanging string. Whether piano, violin, pipe organ, or flute, all are alike and indifferent to it, because along time lines that Helmholtz laid down, and that the foremost electrical invention of our time has been following, Dr. Thaddeus Cahill has devised a mechanism which throws on to the circuits, manipulated by the performer at the central keyboard, the electrical current waves that, received by the telephone diaphragm at any one of ten thousand subscribers' stations, produce musical sounds of unprecedented clearness, sweetness, and purity. In the future, Paderewskis will not earn their living by occasional appearances in isolated halls, but as central-station operators, probably in obscurity and seclusion, but charming a whole cityful at the same instant. Edison once said to the writer that the world was coming to a time when everything would be done automatically, by electricity, and when "eight hours" would seem the depth of slavery. Then the world would be run from one keyboard ; but while all others loafed and invited their souls he wanted to be the man at the switch. In this wise, when Liszt or Rubinstein is at the telharmonium, what will become of the second-rates?



PLAYING UPON THE

CURRENT. The Cahill telharmonium may be compared with a pipe organ. The performer at its keyboard, instead of playing upon air in the pipes, plays upon the electric current that is being generated in a large number of small dynamo-electric machines of the "alternating-current" type. These little "inductor" alternators are of quite simple construction, from the mechanical standpoint, though it is needless to say that the inventor did not find out at once all he wanted to know about them. That took a good ten years. In each alternator the current surges to and fro at a different frequency or rate of speed,--thousands and thousands of times a minute ; and this current as it reaches the telephone at the near or the distant station causes the

diaphragm of that instrument to emit a musical note characteristic of that current whenever it is generated at just that "frequency" or rate of vibration in the circuit. The rest is relatively easy. The revolving parts of the little alternators are mounted upon shafts, which are geared together. Each revolving part, or "rotor," having its own number of poles, or teeth, in the magnetic field of force, and each having its own angular velocity, the arrangement gives us the ability to produce, in the initial condition of musical electrical waves, the notes through a compass of five octaves. When an organ is played, a boy, or now quite often an electric motor, pumps the bellows. When the telharmonium is played, a motor similarly sets it going, so that all the little interlocked rotors are revolved at once and offer their plastic currents to the facile touch of the performer to whose keyboard the wires from the alternators lead. This keyboard is shown in one of time engravings, and has two banks of keys to accommodate all the notes thus made available. If one key is depressed, the circuit is closed on a ground tone and one or more allied circuits that will give the harmonics corresponding to that tone. But the currents, before they go to the exterior circuit containing the subscriber's telephone are



not left in their primitive simple form. On the contrary, they are passed, as they might be in ordinary lighting and power service, through transformers, where they are blended ; and in these "tone mixers" the simple sinusoidal wave of the alternator current becomes too complex to know itself. In this manner highly composite vibrations are built up which fall upon the ear as musical chords of great beauty and purity of tone. This process of interweaving of currents can be pushed very far, and the complex vibrations from different keyboards can be combined into others even more subtly superposed and wedded so as to produce in the telephone receiver the effect of several voices or instruments Within the range of such an equipment appear possible some sounds never before heard on land or sea. The performer at this keyboard has a receiver close at his side, so that he can tell exactly how he is playing to his unseen audience ; and it is extraordinary to note how easily and perfectly the electric currents are manipulated so that with their own instantaneity they respond to every wave of personal emotion and every nuance of touch. It is, indeed, this immediateness of control and the singular purity of tone that appeal to the watchful listener. A musician will readily understand how the timbre is also secured from such resources, for with current combinations yielding the needed harmonics, string, brass, and wood effects, etc.; can be obtained simply by mixing the harmonics,--that is, the current,--in the required proportions.



THE EQUIPMENT DESCRIBED.

The first plant in the world of this kind is at Holyoke, Mass., in the laboratory of Dr. Cahill, and the second is being built for regular work over telephone circuits in New York City, where anybody can tap on. The initial or experimental outfit, weighing about 200 tons and costing a thousand dollars a ton, embodies 145 of the inductor alternators, each mounted on an 11-inch shaft ; and the heavy steel girder bed-plate of the machine is over 60 feet long. The alternators are grouped in 8 sections, and the switchboards are in 10 sections, including nearly 2,000 switches ; and the controlling keyboard operates electro-magnetically. Then there are the inductorium "tone mixers." Altogether, quite a dainty little pile of steel, copper wire, and other metal out of which to extract soft music! But it does not follow that later equipments will necessarily be so ponderous. Moreover, the current-consumption in each telephone receiver of the megaphone style is infinitesimal. A single incandescent lamp takes twenty times as much ; so that a very few horse-power go a long way in the new art of telharmony. Such music can obviously be laid on anywhere,--in homes, hospitals, factories, restaurants, theaters, hotels, wherever an orchestra or a single musician has served before, or wherever there is a craving for music. The dream of Bellamy in "Looking Backward" is thus realized, and beautiful music is dispensed everywhere for any one who cares to throw the switch. The music from these electric pipes of Pan may the long list of obsolete instruments. Will the piano join the spinet and harpsichord? Who now shall need to strum?

DR. CAHILL, THE INVENTOR.

Dr. Cahill was born in Iowa, and passed several years of his youth in Ohio, his father being a physician at Oberlin, where the youth pursued his studies and began his experiments in electric music. Through the friendship of the late Amos J. Cummings, he obtained a clerkship in Washington, and there he began the study of law. In 1892, when twenty-five years of age, he graduated from the Columbian



Law School, third in a class of over one hundred, and was admitted to the bar in 1894, receiving six years later the degree of D.C.L. from the Columbian University. The thoroughness of his legal work did not, however, in any degree lessen his enthusiasm and application as to invention and the study of musical production ; and he was fortunate in enjoying in all his work the constant and generous encouragement of his father and brothers. Although finding time to perfect an electric typewriter, he directed his chief attention to the musical apparatus, and in 1902 had it in a sufficiently advanced state to give a demonstration before Lord Kelvin when that distinguished physicist was last in this country. In 1903, Dr. Cahill removed his Washington laboratory to Holyoke, Mass., where he had already established another plant, and thus New England, so intimately associated with the creation of the telephone, has witnessed the development and perfection of a distinct new art that may well be spoken of as the telephone's firstborn.



Music By Wireless to the Times Building (1907)

Although details are sparse, for this experiment Lee DeForest appears to have used an arc-transmitter, originally developed by Valdemar Poulsen, and an electrolytic receiver, originally developed by Reginald Fessenden. And the lack of continued experiments showed that audio radio transmissions were still far from being perfected enough to go into commercial operation.

New York Times, March 8, 1907, page 16:

MUSIC BY WIRELESS TO THE TIMES TOWER__________

Telephone Messages Also Received Through the Ether.

__________

A HINT OF WHAT MAY BE__________

By and By You Can Talk to Your Wife When She's on a Steamer Out at Sea.

__________ To the top of the Times Building from Telharmonic Hall at Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street, music and telephone messages were sent by wireless last night. The message received varied in importance, from "Harriman has not yet butchered the Government" to "soon every up to date reporter will be equipped with a wireless telephone, which he will ground with his heel in the mud and through which he will tell his city editor that the rumor that Mrs. Blank has abandoned her poodle dog is false." After many messages had been received in this way the Telharmonium people began to send their music through. While the music was being received the wireless stations at 42 Broadway, in Bridgeport and at the Brooklyn Navy Yard cut in with their irregular beat of Morse. All this came to the twenty-fourth floor of THE TIMES Building. There the receiving apparatus was arranged. From it two wires led up to the top of the flagstaff on the tower. On the top floor of the Telharmonic Building was a transmitting apparatus connected similarly with two wires leading to the flagpole of that building. At the sending end was the source of the current, which was strong enough to light five thirty-two candle-power incandescent globes. By means of an oscillator the direct Edison current was changed into high frequency oscillating currents. These caused the radiation of electric waves from the ends of the flagpole wires at Thirty-ninth Street into the ether. The frequency of these currents is too great to be detected by the human ear at the receiver in telephoning; so a microphone with a diaphram was inserted in the oscillating circuit in such a way that the vibrations of the diaphragm were reproduced with perfect fidelity at the receiving end. Dr. Lee De Forest of the De Forest Radio Telephone Company, inventor of the wireless telephone, began to receive the messages in THE TIMES tower just before 8 o'clock. He explained that the electric waves, varying in intensity according to the vibrations of the voice at the other end of the wireless line,


Music By Wireless to the Times Building (1907)

were transmitted from the flagpole wires at THE TIMES end to a cup of fluid whose resistance to a secondary current of electricity was in direct ratio to the intensity of the waves received. This secondary current of electricity, which flowed from a dry-cell battery through a tiny telephone line entirely at the receiving end was in reality a local telephone for the transformation of modulated electric waves into vibrations which could be distinguished by the ear as sounds. Consequently, with a receiver over the ears not unlike an ordinary telephone receiver, the listener could not only hear words, but all other sounds originating at the transmitting end. As the pitch used was much the same as that of wireless telegraphy, the occasional breaking in of the wireless stations could not be obviated, though later experiments with the pitch will change this. The sending of the music was a different process. By means of induction, the electric current of the Telharmonium plant was made to induce its modifications in the Edison current, so that the electric waves eventually were heard as music. Dr. De Forest will now increase the area of his experiments. Using his laboratory as a sending station, he will receive at different points of increasing distance. Eventually, probably some time this Summer, he will set up a station. He hopes to effect an arrangement with some railroad which employs a fleet of tugboats so that by using the regular telephone into his station from their own offices they can be put into direct communication with their tugs in the bay and the rivers. In the future he believes that a man, sitting in Bridgeport at the telephone in his own house, by calling up the De Forest station, can talk to his wife as she sails for Europe, even after she is out of sight of land. The wireless telephone has the advantage of not requiring the services of an operator. Dr. De Forest began experimenting with his present apparatus last December. He had, however, obtained patents some five years ago. His earlier experiments were purely laboratory ones designed to increase the articulation. The perfection of the wireless telephone will also mean that houses will not have to be wired to receive Telharmonic music. With a receiver they can take it from the air.



History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph (1860) -- Steinheil extract

Telegraphs operate by sending electrical currents along wires. In Samuel Morse's original lines, two wires were used -- a sending plus a return wire -- to create a complete electrical circuit. However, in 1837 Carl August von Steinheil of Munich, Germany found that, by connecting the end of the sending wire to plates buried in the ground, the return wire could be eliminated. At the time, a common but incorrect belief was that the return current was now traveling through the ground back to the sending point, in order to complete the circuit, which in turn led to speculation about telegraphy through the ground without using any wires. This turned out to be impossible using standard electrical currents, but eventually it would prove possible using radio waves, although radio was not yet known at the time.


STEINHEIL'S TELEGRAPH. "Ampère required more than sixty wires, whereas thirty or so were sufficient for Soemmering. Wheatsone and Cooke reduced their number to five; Gauss, and, probably in imitation of him, Schilling, as likewise Morse, made use of but a single wire running to the distant station and back. One might imagine that this part of the arrangement could not be further simplified; such, however, is by no means the case. We have found that even the half of this length of wire may be dispensed with, and that with certain precautions its place is supplied by the ground itself. We know, in theory, that the conducting powers of the ground and of water are very small compared with that of the metals, especially copper. It seems, however, to have been previously overlooked, that we have it within our reach to make a perfectly good conductor out of water or any other of the so-called semi-conductors. All that is required is, that the surface that its section presents should be as much greater than that of the metal, as its conducting power is less. In that case, the resistance offered by the semi-conductors will equal that of the perfect conductor; and as we can make conductors of the ground of any size we please, simply by adapting to the ends of the wires plates presenting a sufficient surface of contact, it is evident that we can diminish the resistance offered by the ground or by water to any extent we like. We can, indeed, so reduce this resistance as to make it quite insensible when compared with that offered by the metallic circuit, so that not only is half the wire spared, but even the resistance that such a circuit would present is diminished by one half. This fact, the importance of which in the erection of galvanic telegraphs speaks for itself, furnishes an additional feature in which galvanism resembles electricity. The experiments of Winckler, at Leipsic, had already shown that, with frictional electricity, the ground may replace a portion of the discharging wire. "The inquiry into the laws of dispersion, according to which the ground, whose mass is unlimited, is acted upon by the passage of the galvanic current, appears to be a subject replete with interest. The galvanic excitation cannot be confined to the portions of earth situated between the two ends of the wire; on the contrary, it cannot but extend itself indefinitely, and it became, therefore, now only dependent on the law that caused the excitation of the ground, and the distance of the exciting terminations of the wire, whether it was necessary or not to have any metallic communication at all for carrying on telegraphic intercourse. "I can here only state, in a general way, that I have succeeded in deducing this law experimentally from the phenomena it presents; and that the result of the investigation is, that the excitation diminishes rapidly, as the distance between the terminal wires increases.

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History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph (1860) -- Steinheil extract

"An apparatus can be constructed in which the inductor, having no metallic connection with the multiplier, by nothing more than the excitation transmitted through the ground, will produce galvanic currents in that multiplier sufficient to cause a visible deflection of the bar. This is a hitherto unobserved fact, and may be classed among the most extraordinary phenomena that science has revealed to us. It holds good, however, for small distances. It must be left to the future to decide whether we shall ever succeed in telegraphing at great distances without any metallic communication at all. My experiments prove that such a thing is possible up to distances of fifty feet. For distant stations we can only conceive it feasible by augmenting the power of the galvanic induction, or by appropriate multipliers constructed for the purpose, or, finally, by increasing the surface of contact presented by the ends of the multiplier. At all events, the phenomenon merits our best attention, and its influence will not perhaps be altogether overlooked in the theoretic views we may form with regard to galvanism itself."


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