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Author
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Topic: Telegraphy in 1865 and Mission Control
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drifting to the right
Member Posts: 130
From: SW La.
Registered: Aug 2006
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posted 03-27-2021 12:34 PM
  
As an eerily similar version of the remarkable auditory skills of Mission Control are these excerpts from the book, "Beyond the Mississippi," published 1867. This is the author's description of telegraphy in 1865: An expert telegrapher stands in the middle of a room where twenty instruments are tapping out messages from as many different places, and easily reads by sound, any one of them, not in the least confused by the rest.The Baltimore operator sitting at his table, reads by sound the messages always clicking to and fro between Washington and Philadelphia, New York and Boston. And after hearing half a dozen words of any dispatch, he can tell who is the sender, out of all the hundred employees with whose telegraph- writing he is familiar. The remarkable wonders of our human capabilities! |
AstronautBrian
Member Posts: 302
From: Louisiana
Registered: Jan 2006
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posted 03-29-2021 10:39 PM
Hello fellow Louisianian. What you posted reminds me of my grandmother.She was originally from Oregon. During World War II, she worked for Pacific Telegraph and Telephone in Portland, which was contracted by the Army. She was a civilian, but her immediate supervisor was an Army Major. She worked in a room with other women, all of whom had learned morse code. They would receive messages from the Pacific Theater and translate it into plane English, typing it out on a typewriter. She was only twenty years old when the war ended in 1945. I was amazed how my grandmother, of all people, served the war effort and even had to learn morse code to do it and at such a young age. One of her favorite tales was receiving official word that the Japanese had finally accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and that the war was over. When it came over the wire, they were not allowed to leave the building, until it was all confirmed. After a couple of hours, the news finally went public. She says she may have been one of the first civilians in the continental United States to learn that the war was over. Who knows? Maybe she was. All she thought about at the time was that her five brothers in the service, and my grandfather, would finally be able to come home. |
drifting to the right
Member Posts: 130
From: SW La.
Registered: Aug 2006
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posted 03-30-2021 07:49 AM
Great story, Brian, one to pass down through family generations.By the way, my mom was a WWII stenographer for the Army Air Corps, Washington DC, and later Denver, Co., where she met my Cajun dad. |
Jim Behling
Member Posts: 1621
From: Cape Canaveral, FL
Registered: Mar 2010
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posted 03-30-2021 11:34 AM
quote:
Originally posted by drifting to the right:
As an eerily similar version of the remarkable auditory skills of Mission Control are these excerpts from the book...
It isn't unique to mission control. There are more voice nets active at the launch site than during missions. |
SkyMan1958
Member Posts: 1011
From: CA.
Registered: Jan 2011
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posted 03-30-2021 12:14 PM
Morse code operators each have individual tapping characteristics. It is called "a hand." During World War II if agents (spies) were captured the capturers tried to use them to send messages with false information back to their spy headquarters. Failing that, the counter intelligence agency would sometimes use the spies radios themselves to send back false information.Aside from the code words (alias etc.) identifying the sender, the human receiver operators would recognize "the hand," and if the hand did not correspond with the alias, etc., then the operators would tell their superiors that the agent had been captured and that the enemy was using the radio set. |
drifting to the right
Member Posts: 130
From: SW La.
Registered: Aug 2006
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posted 03-30-2021 04:29 PM
Similar compromised "hand" recognition occurred during the Civil War. From the same book aforementioned: During one of John Morgan's raids into Indiana, he entered the telegraph office of an interior village; and with drawn revolver commanded the operator to ask a neighboring town on the Ohio river, whether any Federal gunboats were there. The young man could give no warning; — there was the six-shooter, and a rebel telegrapher who accompanied Morgan eyed him like a lynx. So he made the simple inquiry. But the operator at the river noticed the tremulousness and excitement in the sensitive metallic voice asking the question, and instantly surmised the cause. There were no gunboats within twenty miles; but he promptly replied:There are two at the landing; and from my window I see three more just coming around the bend! This was enough for Morgan. He sought some safer point for recrossing the river. | |
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