[GreenKeys] What is to become of NADCOMM?

[Jack]

It's surprising that with all of the telegraph stuff that's always on Ebay
that a museum couldn't spend the few bucks to have an entire system in
operation.
I recently purchased a neat circuit board that sends "What Hath God
Wrought!" to a telegraph sounder. My Western Electric sounder worked the
first time I wired it up to the board.

*************

This leads me to something that I have been wanting to mention to the
Greenkeys gang and keep forgetting:

Has anyone been to the Smithsonian lately? I finally got there for the first
time in early December. While the air and space display is great, I couldn't
find one Teletype. Then I went through another hall where there was all
sorts of mechanical stuff, from vehicles through complete newpaper
publishing displays...but not one Teletype. As I was getting towards the end
of the display (and my wife got tired of me muttering "...there's no
Teletypes!!"), I found a poor Model 28ASR labelled as a "police data
terminal" or something like that. It had most of the keys missing or dropped
into the keyboard shroud and the top plate of the TD was gone (and, oddly
enough, it wasn't the plate that snaps off). Unfortunately, it sits pretty
close where kids (another name for vandals) could get at it.
Has anyone ever heard of any displays dedicated to
telephone/telegraph/teletype at the Smithsonian? I do understand that they
move the displays in and out and they can't show everything, but, heck, the
"computer" display had more junk than real historically-important gear. I
wonder if the idea behind the displays is to show things that no one ever
saw versus what really made the difference to the growth of the country?
I would hope that Don's stuff doesn't disappear like the old AT&T displays
did years ago. Just remember that last scene from "Raiders of the Lost
Ark"...!

Jack WA2HWJ