[GreenKeys] East Wire and West Wire?

[Don Robert House]

Jim Haynes would be best to answer your question...

I believe the East and West originated with railroad circuits that  
actually went
East and West.  One circuit to track trains going East and one for West.

On our circuit designs for telephony, a point to point circuit was  
from A to Z.
On a multipoint circuit the master station was A and all the others  
wound up
as Z with each meet point as A.  Circuit station numbering was a whole
different convention, that evolved over time.

Blah, blah, blah... enough said.

Don
K9TTY


On 19 Mar 2010, at 10:28 AM, dmm at lemur.com wrote:


Might I trouble the list with a question about terminology?
It is probably (a) a FAQ, or (b) obvious to everyone except me,
or (c) completely unimportant, but I find it puzzling.
This probably comes from not having any practical experience
in the field (but doing it all from books, instead).

In reading teletype and telegraph books, I find that sometimes
lines are identified as the "east wire" the west wire.  What were the
conventions for this?  Was it just arbitrary (another way of
saying "A" and "B"), or was there a pattern/significance/meaning
to East vs. West?

I've encountered this terminology in three places:

In TM 11-680 (Teletypewriter Circuits and Equipment (Fundamentals)),
and, more frequently, in TM 11-358 (Telegraph Central Office Set TC-3).
Here "East" and "West" seem to be just synonyms for "local" and "line."

In late 19th century textbooks such as Maver's _American Telegraphy
and Encyclopedia of the Telegraph_ (various editions, many of which
are online on Google Books).  Here the terms are used when discussing
repeaters and seem to be little more than a different way of  
distinguishing
A from B.

In the original Morse/Vail demonstration line from Washington to
Baltimore, as Vail described it (_Description of the American
Electro-Magnetic Telegraph_; also online on Google and quite  
interesting),
as well as one manual of telegraph codes done at almost the same
time (Rogers, _The Telegraph Dictionary and Seaman's Signal Book_,  
1845).
There may, or may not, be some relationship between Vail's use and
the way in which Faraday defined "anode" (rising-sun road; east) and
"cathode" (setting-sun road; west), but it probably isn't worth going  
into.

So what were the conventions for "east" and "west" in landline  
telegraphy/tty?

Regards,
David M.
===
Dr. David M. MacMillan * dmm at lemur.com * www.lemur.com & www.CircuitousRoot.com

   First do no harm. (Primum non nocere.)
       - possibly Galen; see also Hippocrates (Epidemics, Bk. I, Sect.  
XI.)
   The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
       - Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915); Aldo Leopold

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