Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1904-03-08
PSYCHOLOGY OF Ts-Eoa.st. +.
= Curious Mixture of Impressions in
the Mind of the Operator.


Did you ever think about the psy-
chology of telegraphy2s asked an old
member of the craft, as told in the
New Orleans Times-Democrat. Did
you ever think about the things which
crowd into the operators mind when
he is hammering away on his type
writer in large newspaper Office re-
ceiving the stories of the day, the &C
counts of the various events which
mark the daily history of the world?
Life in all its phases passes before
him kaleidoscopically now something
humorous and again something which
almost wrings the tears from his eyes;
now murder and again an accident,
holocaust, and SO ON. with an almost
endless variety of things which call
into play complex mental activities,
and yet he keeps hammering away on
the keyboard with apparent callous-
ness.
But despite this seeming indiffer-
ence to the stories which are told in
the metallic ticking of the instrument
before him, he is warmly susceptible
to the influences which are playing
on his faculties. He is keenly alive
TO the situation. The instrument be-
fore him is throbbing with the pulse
of the world. Events of large and
small proportion troop, one after an
other, through his mind. The worlds
movements are passing like the pic
lures of the vitagraph, a new scene
with new meaning coming with each
succeeding instant of time. Literally
the details of the worlds daily doings
drag through his mind.
often they do not come in regular
sequence. At times there are breaks
in the steady flow of things, gaps
which are made by other events of
greater moment. There is a slight
pause during the receiving of a dull
statistical report, or the report of the
dull prosaic congressional proceedings,
or a stale political announcement
Suddenly a startling bulletin interpret
lates. 1t schedules a big happening,
the assassination of a crowned head,
or a ruler of some country where
crowns are not worn, or it may be a
catastrophe in which many lives
flicker out like a candle in a gale. At
any rate, Ii is something big, some
thing which easily takes precedence
over other events Of the day, and the
operator gives it the right of way
over the wire. He knows it is the
thing to be played up" the thing to
be loaded in the composing room and
run under a scare head.
Under such circumstances the ope-
rator receives with eager ears, and
enters into all the excitement of the
situation, although one may not no
tice the fact by looking at his features.
He does not show it, Yes, the world
literally crowds through the operators
mind, but few persons understand the
excitement incident to his calling.
illustrating the curious mixture of
things which the operator must handle
in a night here are few things at
random from the schedule: Humorous
political incident, murder, church
meeting, fire, banana shipment, sui
eide, lynching, war story, railroad
wreck, drowning, departure of steam
ship, speech, social scandal, robbery
riot, death of prominent person, and
so on and so on. All these things
conjure up different pictures and call
different sensations into play, and be-
sides these the telegraph operator
must have some consciousness of the
sounds and things around him. The
operators mind is curious mixture
of impressions"