[CW] Morse Code bug in Sacramento Railroad Museum

[David Ring]

The railroads and the telegraph pushed across the USA at the same
time.  Western Union spanned the USA in 1861. The USA was linked by
rail a few years later in 1869  - following the route of present day
Interstate 80.

 In 1865, WU formed the Russian-American Telegraph Company to push
across Alaska and across the Beiring Straights to Siberia and westward
to Moscow and thence to Europe - but the trans-Atlantic cables beat
them to Europe.

The landline Morse use faded by the middle 1970s, from Western Union,
from the railroads, and from the brokerage houses.  I met a man who
was a telegrapher for the Boston Stock Exchange about 1972.

Private lines continued to exist.  There is a photo I've seen of the
Fenway Park (Boston) press box and there is an old gentleman with a
sounder and a Vibroplex sending the box scores for the Boston Red Sox
- New York Yankees American League pennant games.  That was the one
that Bucky Dent got a three run home run in,

I can't imagine who would have paid for a telegrapher for that game -
but since the team was NY and knowing that Edwin Jay Quinby of Union,
NJ and others still had a private line circuit until the early 1980s,
I speculate that the group of retired telegraphers in the NYC area
rented a telegraph line from AT&T and sent a telegrapher up to Boston.
 After all, that group of telegraphers - perhaps a dozen or so - was
already paying for leased lines from AT&T every month to run their
telegraph loop around CT, NY and NJ.   Jay Quinby wrote the excellent
book "Ida was a Tramp" about his early days with spark on a tramp
ship.  He also had 5,000 organ pipes in his converted firehouse home -
but that's another story.

My specualation - but I wouldn't be surprised if I were correct.  In
1978, it would have to be a group of telegraphers who did this - as
the press was using AT&T audio lines and perhaps satellite feeds by
that time.

The Morse Telegraph Club is still active with several thousand retired
telegraphers, historians, and those interested in telegraphy.

There were short runs of wire lines on railroads until the middle
1980s. According to Paul Dumesnil of Windsor, NS (a FISTS member and
Radio Officer) there was one line that was still operational between
Moncton, NB, intermediate stations and crossings and Halifax, NS
(about 260 miles) as late as 1996 that was used by the staff for short
messages like "Call me on the telephone" and things like that.  One
railroad electrician who was there to service the radios spotted it
one day and a week later, cut the wires.  He cut the wires just so it
wouldn't work.

See some of the articles I found below my signature.

73

David Ring, N1EA
++++

A search returned this from Economic History Services:
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/nonnenmacher.industry.telegraphic.us

Telegraphs and Railroads

The telegraph and the railroad were natural partners in commerce. The
telegraph needed the right of way that the railroads provided and the
railroads needed the telegraph to coordinate the arrival and departure
of trains. These synergies were not immediately recognized. Only in
1851 did railways start to use telegraphy. Prior to that, telegraph
wires strung along the tracks were seen as a nuisance, occasionally
sagging and causing accidents and even fatalities.

The greatest savings of the telegraph were from the continued use of
single-tracked railroad lines. Prior to 1851, the U.S. system was
single-tracked, and trains ran on a time-interval system. Two types of
accidents could occur. Trains running in opposite directions could run
into one another, as could trains running in the same direction. The
potential for accidents required that railroad managers be very
careful in dispatching trains. One way to reduce the number of
accidents would have been to double-track the system. A second,
better, way was to use the telegraph.

Double-tracking was a good alternative, but not perfect.
Double-tracked lines would eliminate head-on collisions, but not same
direction ones. This would still need to be done using a timing
system, i.e. requiring a time interval between departing trains.
Accidents were still possible using this system. By using the
telegraph, station managers knew exactly what trains were on the
tracks under their supervision. Double-tracking the U.S. rail system
in 1893 has been estimated to cost $957 million. Western Union's book
capitalization was $123 million in 1893, making this seem like a good
investment. Of course, the railroads could have used a system like
Chappe's visual telegraph to coordinate traffic, but such a system
would have been less reliable and would not have been able to handle
the same volume of traffic.

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