Peninsula Telegraph-Recorder

WYSSA (Elizabeth Bradfield, Atlantic Monthly, May 2005)

POETRY MAY 2005 ATLANTIC MONTHLY
BY ELIZABETH BRADFIELD
WYSSA

Antarctica, 1961

Compressed for Morse, compressed to better the odds
this first, flimsy signal might send sense across ocean
unbroken, I type just WYSSA, which you know means
all my love, darling in this telegraph of foreseen
longing. In further news, YIHKE—I have grown

a beard which is generally admired, and with it
will tease the soft hollow between your hip bones
as you lie in the green field beyond our gate, or,
if you dislike the beard, I will lay my head in your lap
and let you cut it from me, cut away my months gone

and burn them, acrid and bitter. WUYGT—elephant seals
are breeding, and although their heaving is nothing like
our shadows against cabbage-rose wallpaper, I am
aroused. They are the only flesh here, and they slap
against each other with unrelenting fervor. YOGIP—

please send details of bank account. Do you have
enough? Has my time here at least fattened something?
Can I afford to say WYSSA again? YAYIR—fine snow
has penetrated through small crevices in the buildings.
I am cold. And although we decided this code

with your breath still against my neck, your heat
anything but distant, believe that my heart's capacity
has, if anything, expanded in this chill. YONOY—
from now on, all I hammer against the sounding metal
of this small machine is WYSSA. All of it.

excerpt from the Australian Antarctic ANARE code

WEATHER

YARMO It has been sleeting
YARPY Had a hurricane which
YASAK Brilliant aurora
YASEL We've just had a blizzard
YASKA It has been very cold
YASLE It has been ususually warm
YASNO It has been raining
YASON We are having a blizzard
YASUP It has been snowing (for the past)
YATAL We've been having heavy fogs
YATEM Handicapped by bad weather
YATLA Weather has been good enough
YATME The weather has been quite decent for a change
YATOP The weather has been very bad for the past
YATPO The weather has been so bad that
YATRY Wind velocity (ies) has/have reached
YAUCY Weather too bad for
YAUDZ In bad weather
YAURN Snow is drifting through the station
YAUSP Deep snow drifts have accumulated in the lee of huts
YAUXT The temperature has been
YAUJF The sea is beginning to freeze
YAUHD in moderately good weather
YAYIR Fine snow has penetrated through small crevices in the huts
YATYR Aurora lights up the sky at night

More of the ANARE code.

Do you hear anything about Galveston? (1900 Galveston hurricane, from 1999 ISAAC's STORM)

DAY 7 | PART 1

TELEGRAM

Washington, D.C.
Sept. 9, 1900
To: Manager, Western Union
Houston, Texas

Do you hear anything about Galveston?

Willis L. Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau

DAY 7 | PART 2

TELEGRAM

Houston, Texas
7:37 p.m.
Sept. 9, 1900

To: Willis Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau Washington, D.C.

We have been absolutely unable to hear a word from Galveston since 4 p.m. yesterday...

G. L. Vaughan,
Manager
Western Union, Houston

DAY 7 | PART 3

TELEGRAM

Houston, Texas
11:25 p.m.
Sept. 9, 1900

To: Willis Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau

First news from Galveston just received by train which could get no closer to the bay shore than six miles, where Prairie was strewn with debris and dead bodies. About two hundred corpses counted from train. Large Steamship stranded two miles inland. Nothing could be seen of Galveston. Loss of life and property undoubtedly most appalling. Weather clear and bright here with gentle southeast wind.

G. L. Vaughan
Manager,
Western Union, Houston

Excerpted from ISAAC'S STORM. Copyright © 1999 by Erik Larson.

Holiday greeting card (The Operator, 1880)

Another year has passed away
Since you gladdened our hearts one Christmas day
Causing them to beat with heartfelt joy
As you kindly remembered the telegraph boy.

While you sit by your warm fires
We bring you the news from our great wires.
It rains, it hails, it sometimes snows;
But we carry the message wheree'r it is to go.

--

The Operator was a trade publication for those in the telegraph business; the quote is from Downey's "Telegraph Messenger Boys" (Routledge, 2002).

"The Iliad", Homer (800 BCE)

But Achilles dear to Jove arose, and Minerva flung her tasselled aegis round his strong shoulders; she crowned his head with a halo of golden cloud from which she kindled a glow of gleaming fire. As the smoke that goes up into heaven from some city that is being beleaguered on an island far out at sea- all day long do men sally from the city and fight their hardest, and at the going down of the sun the line of beacon-fires blazes forth, flaring high for those that dwell near them to behold, if so be that they may come with their ships and succour them- even so did the light flare from the head of Achilles, as he stood by the trench, going beyond the wall- but he aid not join the Achaeans for he heeded the charge which his mother laid upon him.

(Homer tr. Butler at MIT Classics)

from the introduction to Old Wires and New Waves: The History of the Telegraph, Harlow, 1936.

Telegraph System - Philo Holcomb, Jr. - Patent 2,282,358 (Western Union, applied 1939, granted 1942)

The Western Union Telegraph Company, New
York, N. Y-, a corporation of New York
Application December 7,1939,

This invention relates to signalling systems and more particularly to expanding channel or varioplex telegraph systems wherein a channel or lane of traffic is shared by a variable number of communication channels or sources of telegraph signals.

In a prior application Ser. No. 666,004, filed April 16, 1933, there is disclosed a telegraph system embodying the basic principle of the expanding channel system. The term "expanding channel system" as used herein refers to a system in which a variable number of telegraphic transmitters or other sending devices are arranged to control receiving devices corresponding to each sending device over a lane of traffic, substantially the entire lane time in the preferred system being divided among the operative transmitters. The lane of traffic preferably comprises a plurality of channels of a synchronous multiplex system but may comprise a single channel of such a system, one or more wire or carrier current channels or combinations of different types of communication channels. Hence the expression "lane of traffic" as used herein designates any suitable route or medium over which signalling is accomplished.

The expanding channel or varioplex system thus comprises a multiplex system in which the number of communication or subchannels operating over the connecting circuit or lane of traffic may be expanded or contracted by cutting in or out transmitting and receiving devices, the operative channels sharing the lane of traffic. The present invention relates particularly to a printing telegraph system of this character in which message characters are sent in sequence from one busy channel transmitter after another, omitting the idle or inoperative channels, although it is not limited to such systems.

Mental Telegraphy (Mark Twain, 1878/1891)

Note to the Editor. - By glancing over the inclosed bundle of rusty old manuscript, you will perceive that I once made a great discovery: the discovery that certain sorts of thing which, from the beginning of the world, had always been regarded as merely "curious coincidences" - that is to say, accidents - were no more accidental than is the sending and receiving of a telegram an accident. I made this discovery sixteen or seventeen years ago, and gave it a name - "Mental Telegraphy." It is the same thing around the outer edges of which the Psychical Society of England began to group (and play with) four or five years ago, and which they named "Telepathy." Within the last two or three years they have penetrated toward the heart of the matter, however, and have found out that mind can act upon mind in a quite detailed and elaborate way over vast stretches of land and water. And they have succeeded in doing, by their great credit and influence, what I could never have done - they have convinced the world that mental telegraphy is not a jest, but a fact, and that it is a thing not rare, but exceedingly common. They have done our age a service - and a very great service, I think.

The entirety of this piece is at Robert Heinlein's site (of all places).

Wired love : a romance of dots and dashes / by Ella Cheever Thayer (1880)

Miss Nattie Rogers, telegraph operator, lived, as it were, in two
worlds. The one her office, dingy and curtailed as to proportions, but
from whence she could wander away through the medium of that slender
telegraph wire, on a sort of electric wings, to distant cities and
towns; where, although alone all day, she did not lack social
intercourse, and where she could amuse herself if she chose, by
listening to and speculating upon the many messages of joy or of sorrow,
of business and of pleasure, constantly going over the wire. But the
other world in which Miss Rogers lived was very different; the world
bounded by the four walls of a back room at Miss Betsey Kling's. It must
be confessed that there are more pleasing views than sheds in greater or
less degrees of dilapidation, a sickly grape-vine, a line of flapping
sheets, an overflowing ash barrel; sweeter sounds than the dulcet notes
of old rag-men, the serenades of musical cats, or the strains of a
cornet played upon at intervals from nine P. M. to twelve, with the
evident purpose of exhausting superfluous air in the performer's lungs.
Perhaps, too, there was more agreeable company possible than Miss Betsey
Kling.

Therefore, in the evening, Sunday and holiday, if not in the telegraphic
world of Miss Rogers, loneliness, and the unpleasant sensation known as
"blues" are not uncommon.

Full text in all of its Gutenbergian ASCII glory is available.

Google Books has a copy digitized from NYPL.

The Seattle Telegraphers Lockout of 1918 (Seattle General Strike Project, U of Washington)

from the University of Washington's Seattle General Strike site:

On Monday April 29 1918, a local branch of the Commercial Telegraphers Union held a small meeting in Seattle, unaware of the storm of controversy and political wrangling that would follow for the next four months and the shockwaves that would bring labor in Seattle ever closer together. Telegraphers from the local Western Union and Postal Telegraph Companies, many of them young women, enthusiastically attended the meeting. The following day they attended work, excited by the possibilities of unionism, but many still undecided about whether or not to join the union. They wore red, white and blue ribbons to work that Tuesday, the colors of the CTU. The reaction was immediate. The two companies began to discharge any workers deemed to have an affiliation to the union. Any telegraphers who wore the colors were made to leave. Others were discharged after intensive questioning, deemed sympathetic to the union. Many of these women stood up for their fellow employees out of solidarity and the company fired them. The discriminatory firings by both companies continued throughout the first week in May and brought the situation to the attention of labor and union leaders, and the National War Labor Board.

TELEGRAPH OPERATORS UNITE. International Organization Formed at a Meeting in Chicago. (Washington Post, Sept 22 1902)

As reported in the Washington Post in 1902:

Chicago, Sept. 21. -- The International Union of Commercial Telegraphers was formed here to-day by a convention of forty delegates, representing as many cities throughout the United States. A constitution, patterned after that of the International Typographical Union, was adopted, providing for the issue of a working card to each member every three months. This is the first time that an organization of telegraph operators has been formed on these lines. In the past, all efforts at organization were along secret lines.