[GreenKeys] Fw: BBC enquiry - telegraph machine

[Ed Sharpe Archivist for SMECC via GreenKeys]

Doug - We have a couple variants on these ... one is a European   fancy  
rig  with relays,contact peg jacks  and printer all on a  fancy wood  base 
really a treasure... then we have a Bunnell one in  brass also  on a black iron 
base....   then a brass one in a  telco gray cabinet like a portable test 
set.
 
Back in  the 80s Bunnel was selling of  lots of  those and  peg board  
telegraph switchboards, keys   and lots of   tooling... we bought  some... but 
wish  we had bought more! some of  our extras we traded off  for other 
interesting  needed items   here.
 
Ed#
 
 
In a message dated 6/18/2014 6:17:47 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,  
douglas-w-jones at uiowa.edu writes:

________________________________________
From: GreenKeys  [greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net] on behalf of Don 
Robert House  [62.5milliamps at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2014 4:55 PM
To: Jim  Haynes
Cc: Greenkeys; Sam Hallas
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Fw: BBC  enquiry - telegraph machine

In the Bell System we called them "Pen  Recorders"  They were used with
old alarm circuits for fire and  police.
________________________________________

See Wikipedia,  under the heading "pen register".  Morse's marker
(pencil, pen,  whatever) on moving paper tape was the original --
the standard term was  originally "telegraph register".  By the late
19th century, they were  commonly used to record alarm events and
many other things as well as  recording telegraph signals.  So, people
called them pen  registers.

In the 20th century, as dial telephone systems came on line,  the pen
register was the obvious diagnostic instrument to use for  recording
dial pulses -- and law enforcement caught on to that usage,  so
much so that today, any tool that records dialed telephone
numbers is  called a pen register by folks in law enforcement and
criminal  law.

But, I think it is still appropriate to call a mechanism that  records
telegraph pulses by the trace of a pen on a moving paper tape  a
pen register.

Doug Jones
jones at cs.uiowa.edu

PS:  Full disclosure.  I wrote the part of  the Wikipedia article that gives
the history of the term.  When I  found it, the term was purely cited as
a law enforcement term, and nobody  seemed to know where it  came
from.
______________________________________________________________
GreenKeys  mailing list
Home:  http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
Help:  http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post:  mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net

2002-to-present greenkeys archive:  
http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/
1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive:  
http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html
Randy Guttery's  2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool:  
http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html

This list hosted by:  http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list:  http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/attachments/20140619/c92069af/attachment.html>