from: http://pages.cthome.net/fwc/ORIGINS.HTM Click Here: <A HREF="http://pages.cthome.net/fwc/ORIGINS.HTM">ORIGINS.HTM</A> ----- F. W. Chesson ORIGINS.HTM 144 Fiske Street, Mar 25, 2000 Waterbury, CT 06710 SECRET WIRES Open Origins of Secret Wires Telegraphic History Today, the telegraph and the telegram are virtually extinct, replaced by telex, fax and E-Mail. Some old time Morse Men might dourly refer to them as bastard offspring, at that. But these hoary survivors of the world of brass pounders, of boomers and bonus men; and their milieu of the AP Wires, the Phillips Code, extra boards, Press Wireless and night tricks will soon be as extinct as the teen- age telegraphers of the Civil War. Thus, in their origins is their memorial.... Our word Telegraph is from the Greek Telos (distant) and Graphos (writing) Its antecedents were the primal Talking Drums, whose dim, throbbing beats still are heard today under the apt name of the Jungle Telegraph. Drums and trumpets also accompanied the first armies into battle, and at the time of the First World War the United States Army had an elaborate system of Control and Maneuver Bugle Calls. Taps, the most somber of all bugle calls, was composed during the Civil War by General Daniel Butterfield, during the Peninsula Campaign. Signal fires and smoke signals were also early and enduring innovations in the rise of visual communication in Human Civilization. Flags and banners became important means of rallying troops around their king or local leaders in battle. Later, as more uniform wig-wag signals, they became important means of both directing movements and relaying information. With the rise of city-states, kingdoms and finally empires, rapid communications became a matter of national growth and survival. The tightly-knit Inca Empire, which had neither the wheel, the horse or a written language grew in strength based upon a royal courier service of fleet runners bearing detailed message sticks, perhaps an early example of text-compression and shorthand. The Romans kept their far-flung empire united with mounted couriers and some 3,000 fire signal towers. But with The Fall of Rome in AD 476, the lamps of communications and culture soon flickered out. Technical advances slumbered through the Dark Ages, when the written word was almost witchcraft in its own right, and the mounted courier still the fastest thing on Earth. In the Renaissance, learning and experimentation produced a few advances, especially in the city-states of Italy, where the Papacy and its rivals raised diplomatic espionage and cryptography, the art of code making and breaking, into a an enduring if not always honored profession. With the rise of strong national states, covering large territories and maintaining standing armies, communications took on new emphasis. The earlier battlefield flag signals began to be improved upon to convey information with greater speed in accuracy. In 1684, the noted English scientist Robert Hook outlined a definitive visual signaling system to the prestigious Royal Society. By 1750 the words "telegraph" and "relay station" had appeared, as permanent signal stations were built. Chief among these was Claude Chappe, born in Brulon, France on December 26, 1763. He is said to have developed the essence of his system at a grim Jesuit boarding school, where he and two other brothers were segregated in different dormitories. Wishing to silently communicate (and commiserate) with each other, they developed a semaphore system, which Claude later perfected. The Chappe "Aerial Telegraph" consisted of a moveable central arm, at the end of each end was another moveable member, somewhat resembling a person's upper and fore arms. The system demonstrates the many varieties of positions, each able to represent a letter, number, name or phrase. When operated in pairs, some 196 signal positions were possible, leading to numerous code books for special purposes. During the turbulent days of the French Revolution, the elder brother, Ignace Chappe (1760-1829) lobbied the new Republican regime to subsidize Claude's plans for rapid internal communications. So, as Royalist Europe gathered forces to crush the upstart Bourbon-slayers, a line was built from Paris to Lille, 140 miles to the north-west. The first success came in August, 1794, when news of the recapture of Conde Sur L'Escuat from the Austrians was relayed in under an hour from Lille to the Louvre. With practice, and good visibility, Chappe operators at the 16 relay stations brought the transit time down to two minutes, a true quantum-leap for that time. Merchants, traders and bankers, as well as bureaucrats and generals of the new Republique Francais, quickly endorsed the system, and soon a 116-station line to Toulon in the far south was opened. Eventually, a network of 30 towns, linked by over 530 relay stations was functioning. Claude Chappe did not live to see these triumphs. Depressed by many counter-claims and endless litigation, he killed himself in Paris on January 26, 1805. His system soon conquered Europe, as Napoleon could not, and even the western dominions of the immense Russian Empire were in obedient linkage with the latest ukases from St. Petersburg by 1840. In 1822 another French inventor, Colonel Paisley, had improved upon Chappe's original design. The 27 towers of such a system linking Paris with Calais, could transmit a ten word message over the 150 mile circuit in 30 minutes. The longest semaphore circuit was reported from the vastness of France's vast North Africa Empire, and was in operation until 1860. This was eight years after the close-out of the system in France, at which time there were over 550 stations covering a network of nearly 3,000 miles. At the same time, Lord Murphy of the British Admiralty, developed a like system, consisting of large panels with six circular windows, each of which could be opened or closed, so as to provide over sixty code combinations. This arrangement was better than Chappe's, as it allowed operations during night by means of lamps in the windows. Soon, relay stations had linked London with the important ports of Deal, Plymouth and Portsmouth. News of the Battle of Trafalgar's outcome is said to have been delayed by fog, which interrupted the eagerly awaited message at an excruciatingly tense point: "NELSON DEFEATED...!" Was this the entire text? Had England's greatest naval hero since Drake lost to Napoleon's admirals? Then the mists cleared and the signals came clear again, this time in triumph. "NELSON DEFEATED...COMBINED FRENCH AND SPANISH FLEETS." Only later would come the sobering news that Britain's now-greatest maritime leader was dead on the Field of Honor, done in by a marine sharp-shooter from the rigging of an already doomed French warship. Naval and merchant marine signaling also made use of these land semaphore developments. In 1817 Captain Marryat published the first Inter- national Code of Signals, employing the now-familiar colored pennants for letters and numbers in a 9,000-item code book. Forty years later, the British Board of Trade issued a hefty book of over 70,000 entries. Even after the electric telegraph had triumphed on land, arriving ships still flew their identifying colors, as well as their owners' house-flags, to announce their presence, as well as their cargoes and general condition. But one solid-color pennant was anything but a welcome sight. The yellow Quarantine Flag meant contagious sickness aboard, along with the resultant risk to the financial health of the port, from the voyage's backers down to local merchants dependent upon new supplies being quickly landed. In America, one Jonathan Grout constructed a 65 mile visual-signal line in 1800, linking Boston with the island of Martha's Vineyard, south of Cape Cod, exclusively for the transmission of shipping news. Another service came into being about 1820 when Bostonian Samuel Topliff operated a ball and pennant signaling system. This was improved upon by former music store proprietor, John Rowe Parker, who introduced a semaphore and set up stations at Hull and on Ramsford and George's Islands. Parker also compiled an increasing elaborate code book, commencing in 1829, the last hefty edition appeared in 1842, with use by some two thousand American vessels. The operation continued under the ownership of Hudson & Smith until the electric telegraph's tentacles rendered it obsolete. An associate, however, made a successful media transition. Joseph Pope, in charge of the Hull station since 1825, learned to operate the new instrument when the telegraph line reached there, and earned the distinction of having mastered both semaphoric and electric communications and at the same communications center. But, for the most part, the great distances between most populated areas of the new nation generally discouraged semaphore communications and the United States was ripe for the Nineteenth Century's greatest communications systems... the railroad and the electric telegraph. Electric Connections All too frequently, the words Morse Code and Telegraph appear synonymous. Yet long before the advent of Samuel F. B. Morse, and especially in Europe, the idea of communicating by electricity, with the speed of lightning had gripped the attention of academics and practical inventors alike. Static Electricity, that crackling phenomenon of dry, cold weather, was known to the Ancients. Indeed, the Greeks gave us the very word electron, from their name for amber. Rubbing this fossilized resin could produce electrical sparks and led to the term Frictional Electricity. In the latter 18th and early 19th centuries, mechanical static generators were developed by Guericke, Ramsden, Nollet, climaxing in the Wimshurst Machine of 1883, a still-popular laboratory apparatus. The University of Leiden in Holland produced the first condenser, or capacitor, for storing electricity, the famous Leyden Jar. This accessory enabled the generators to produce truly shocking results, and led to parties featuring mass hand-to-hand jolt-taking at fashionable salons in Paris and London. Medical experimenters and quacks were quick to make use of the new technology, leading to both real scientific progress and endless spurious claims of "Electric Curative Discoveries." Still, in 1753, Charles Morrison proposed an electro-static system, using 26 insulated wires from a Leyden Jar to excite individual papers bearing the letters of the alphabet. Ten years later one Dr. Bozolus had reduced the number of conductors down to two. This was entirely feasible, using on-off principle of the Admiralty Semaphore. The binary numbering system, of zeros and ones ( or + and - ) originated with Sir Francis Bacon around 1600 and was well known to mathematicians of the day. Then, on August 5, 1797, in London, a Mr.Ronalds demonstrated another version of Morrison's pith ball telegraph, this time employing two wires with synchronized clockwork dials to ensure that any letter transmitted would be received correctly at the other end of the circuit. This concept of synchronism would eventually led to the development of teletypewriters in the early 20th century. Yet all of these "proposals" appeared to remain locked in theory, or mere demonstration form. Practical telegraphic innovation would have to wait for an improved power source in the form of Current Electricity. The New Age was ushered in with Volta's "Voltaic Pile" battery of 1799. The Pile consisted of a stack of 30 alternating disks of zinc and silver thaler coins, each separated by brine-soaked blotting paper. A host of other cells followed, most employing two dissimilar metals in an acidic ionizing solution. Among these were energizers by Bunsen, Clark, Daniel, Grove and Leclanche. The latter gave us our familiar "dry cell" which is a mushy compromise between wet and truly dry. With its zinc cathode (- pole) and carbon anode (+ pole) it is a typical Primary Cell, which is non- renewable. Secondary cells, like the familiar lead-acid automobile "storage" battery, the Edison nickel-iron cell and the popular nickel- cadmium battery are all rechargeable. None of these, however, were commercially available until the Twentieth Century. Inventors & Scientists of the Early Electric Telegraph Era Ampere 1775-1836 Bain 1810-1877 Biot 1774-1862 Coulomb 1736-1806 Faraday 1791-1867 Galvani 1737-1798 Gauss 1777-1855 Henry 1795-1878 Lenz 1804-1865 Maxwell 1831-1879 Morse 1791-1872 Oersted 1777-1851 Ohm 1787-1854 Savarat 1791-1841 Volta 1745-1827 Weber 1804-1891 Wheatstone 1802-1875 It is interesting to note the number of famous Men of Science who were born about the same time as the Birth of Liberty in America: Biot-1774, Ampere-1775, Gauss-1777, Oersted-1777. Morse was the first Native-Born American inventor (1791) followed closely by Joseph Henry in 1795. Making use of the new power sources, experimenters soon investigated the relation between current flow and terrestrial magnetism. 1820 was a seminal year for electro-magnetism: Hans Christian Oersted of Denmark observed that when a compass was brought near a wire carrying electricity, the needle's deflection indicated a definite relationship. On September 18, Schweigger in Germany invented a "magnetic multiplier" and two days later, Ampere in France published a classic paper on current flow. Artificial magnets had now arrived on the scientific scene, leading to Sturgeon's practical electro-magnet in 1825, and a resultant treasury of exciting applications. In 1827, Savary in England demonstrated electro-magnetic relations, using a Leyden Jar and steel needle, while German physicist Georg Ohm published the general concept of his now-famous "Ohm's Law." For a while, however, electro-chemistry still had some tricks which were to make it a practical competitor in the communications field. The first was an interesting, if highly impractical, "Philosophical Toy." In 1809, Bavarian professor, Dr. Samuel T. Sommerring, demonstrated the use of electrolysis for the transmission of information. Using a circuit of 35 wires attached to individual gold electrodes in an aquarium- like tank of acidified water, he sent electricity from a Voltaic Pile through selected wires. The completed circuits would cause gas bubbles to stream to the top of the "receiver," from the designated electrodes. His transmissions were received from over 2,000 feet of wire, a credible distance, but also gave good reason for the absence of any practical installations; one mile of circuit would have required a staggering 184,000 feet of wire! In 1811, Herr Schweigger of Nuremberg suggested that only two wires were needed, as the duration of the bubble stream and the spacing of the streams could furnish the necessary letter and number elements, all in binary-coded form. Later adherents of chemical telegraphy turned towards less-cumbersome methods involving chemically-treated paper, usually in strip form. One of these was professor Cox of Philadelphia, who, in 1816 demonstrated the color changes caused by current passing through his special paper. One serious problem was that most of these preparations required pre-dampened paper to facilitate the current passage. Ten years later, Harrison Gray Dyar employed improved batteries, whose potentials sparked their way through the moving paper, and went so far as to build an operating line at a Long Island, New York race track. He employed such novel future construction standards as poles with glass insulators and an earth return circuit. Unfortunately, he was threatened with prosecution for "Conspiracy to send Secret Communications in advance of the Mail" and abandoned his work. In Great Britain, such notable scientists as Cruikshanks and Sir Humphrey Davy made similar investigations and proposals. But is was Alexander Bain, (1810-1877) a native of Edinburgh, who gave the chemical telegraph its greatest boost. This prolific inventor had already made a name for himself in the application of electricity to clocks. In 1839 had produced a printing electric-telegraph which was followed by a punched paper tape system for high speed transmission. In 1848, he demonstrated an improved tape-punch in New York City which devoured text at the still-respectable speed of 1,000 words-per-minute! Punched-tape was to be the mainstay of both wire and wireless communications, lasting well into the Computer Era. Indeed, until the advent of magnetic tape, most computers relied on punched paper tape for data and program storage. Bain developed two types of chemical recorders. One was the tape method, mentioned above, for general use; the other, for major terminals, consisted of a treated paper disk, rotating on a phonograph-like brass plate, the recording stylus moving out from the center. This system seemed immune from infringement upon Morse's patents and Bain received his own patent in 1849. He also perfected his own code for representing letters and numbers. Henry O'Rielly, a New York builder of many miles of telegraph lines, was chaffing under the territorial restrictions imposed by his Morse License and jumped at the opportunity to strike out on his own under the Bain System. He accordingly founded the North American Telegraph Company, which was duly incorporated by a special session of the Pennsylvania Legislature on April 10, 1849. Construction was pushed and by June, the projected line from Washington to New York City had opened its Philadelphia office. The Bain lines were well built, using heavy #8 and 9 galvanized iron wire (early copper wire was brittle and susceptible to breakage, as Morse had found to his sorrow) and delivered reliable signals in adverse weather which often crippled Morse's Magnetic Telegraph circuits. Within two years, more than 2,000 miles of North American lines were in service, extending their metallic webs north to Quebec, south to New Orleans and west to Saint Louis. This was serious competition, and the Magnetic Company's stock dividend went from a healthy 9% in 1849 to an anemic 2% for 1851 and 1852. Then Fate, in the form of a technical improvement for the Bain equipment, tipped the scales forever in the favor of magnetic telegraphy. It seemed that, except for the gentle whir of the paper recorders, the instruments were remarkably silent. To attract the attention of a particular station, among several on the same line, Bain devised an audible alarm, which was very close to Morse's own relay in design. The Magnetic Company at once cried "Infringement!" and threw in some hitherto inactive chemical recording aspects of the original Morse Patent of 1840 for good measure. A Federal District Court, sitting in Philadelphia, held prolonged hearings, replete with involved technical arguments by experts from both sides. But in November, 1851, the verdict was rendered in favor of Morse. In the meantime, negotiations were underway for a more or less peaceful merger of the two competitors. Having lost his patent protection and faced with mounting waves of litigation, Bain agreed to sell out for $83,000 in Magnetic stock. He also received some �7,000 for his British patents. But through a combination of litigation and alcohol, died in relative poverty and obscurity in 1875. In less than six months, the change-over from chemical to electro- magnetic equipment and from Bain's code to that of Morse's was all but total. The lone exception was the Vermont and Boston Telegraph Company, with some 600 miles of line, mainly between Boston and Montreal, Quebec, which continued to use both Bain's code and recorders up to 1886. In the end, built-in difficulties would have ultimately doomed the system, one being the very sensitivity of Bain's system. The function which enabled it to respond to minute line currents, but also made it prey to line disturbances. Static charges and shifting magnetic fields were problems enough for a single wire with earth return, but when parallel wires were strung for additional circuits, the resulting induced potentials caused garbling and even total signal blockage. The Bain Code also attracted the attention of a person who would play a significant role in Civil War communications. In 1851, one Dr. Albert Myer published a paper on using the code to communicate with deaf mutes. Ten years later, he was head of the Army Signal Service, destined to become the U.S. Signal Corps, and continued to employ it. But as the Morse Code was by then fully in use in railroad and commercial service, there was no option but to surrender this last vestige of a once-worthy competitor. Indeed, Professor Morse favored Bain's telegraphic alphabet over his own. But when its use was ordered, the operators, virtually to a man, refused to learn the alien symbols! Such habit inertia was carried over into the later Typewriter Age, when legions of touch-typists spurned the efficient Griffith Minimotion and Dvorak-Dealey keyboards, allowing the archaic QWERTY-Saurus of 1872 to perpetuate itself down into the space-age computers of our own Twenty-First Century.... 3250 words RETURN TO INDEX ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
