[GreenKeys] Fw: BBC enquiry - telegraph machine

[Lester Veenstra]

Keep in mind that the slip recorder used on cable circuits was essentially a
galvanometer with an capillary ink feed on the tip that formed the trace on
the paper moving past it. Quite different from "pen registers" or the high
speed (automatic) morse recorders. 


Lester B Veenstra  MØYCM K1YCM W8YCM
lester at veenstras.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: GreenKeys [mailto:greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of
Jones, Douglas W
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2014 9:18 PM
To: greenkeys at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Fw: BBC enquiry - telegraph machine

________________________________________
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.
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