Omaha daily bee., 1907-04-15
HAUNTING SONG OF THE WIRES
Grave and Gay Authorizations which
Prey Upon Nerves of
TeIeErnphers.

One OF the most annoying and curious
phenomena connected with the work Of a
telegraph operator never Is voluntarily
mentioned by the older men in the service.
IL one OF them Is asked about II he will
look bored. possibly a little scared. and
will pooh-pooh OF make vigorous denial,
according to his own particular mood and
temperament. But II you can find your
way into his inner confidence he will tell
you, with lowered voice and mysterious
mlen, Of the haunting song Of the wires
The hallucination, II that is what it really
is, doubtless has a nervous origin. The
man who sits for eight or ten hours a day
before a 'sounder" and listens to the cease
less ck-cllck-cllckety-cl cke ty-click of the
countless messages that flash and click
their way to him and past him from the
four corners OF the earth may be pardoned
II the monotony Of 1t gets on his nerves
after a while. And when II does get on
his nerves there is no telling Just what
form his hallucinatlon may take, nor to
what extent II may carry him,
But there is one thing about the teleg-
rapher's peculiar Authorization, II hallu-
oination IT is, which wears the color of
reasonabeness 1t is the fact that thous-
ands of operators are affected i'm the same
way, and that the hallucination, or nervous
disorder, or whatever 1t may be, never
attacks one who has not served many
years in the profession
To the outsider or to the novice there alb
| solutey is no impression Of rhythm con-
veyed by the broken clicking Of the tele-
! graph sounder It is hard to imagine any
! thing less subject to the laws OF stated and
recurrent ebb and flow than the staccato.
jerl5y irregularly interrupted clicking of
! a.
statement that the constantly varying Sc
quence OF dots and dashes necessary to
send" the uncounted messages that hiss
and whiz across the wires day after day
can hold any stated regularity of recur-
renee is enough to send the listener into
splutter of skepticism and ridicule. Yet
that is the firm conviction of thousands OF
experienced operators, who have spent their
working lives at the sounder and who are
men Of good sense and integrity
Sometimes this sense of rhythm suggests
some particular melody, and in such cases
IL peculiarly is aggravating One of the
best men that ever sat before a Western
Union instrument fairly was driven out of
the service by Sweet Bye and Bye" This
man told, years after he had gone into
the mercantile business and carved out a
large measure of success in his new calling
that for the last two years OF his career
as a telegraph operator he never worked
over five consecutive minutes without dis
tinctly hearing the well known notes OF
| the popular Sunday school song humming
and buzzing from his sounder as the mes
sases clicked themselves along.
No matter how fast or how slow the
sender might work; no matter how grave
OF how sad, how sensible or how silly
the message might be; no matter what the
I.g,,
matter what might be his own mood
clicking along the wires as an accompani-
ment to the words he was receiving he dis
cerned the infections OF 1.-THE Sweet Bye
and Bye" At first IT was a source of
pleasing surprise 10 him. Then it became
an annoyance. Finally II amounted to an
absolute persecution, and caused him to
dash his instrument open in desperation
whenever Il required. He could then re-
sumo, after a moments respite, and work
without annoyance for few minutes,
when the song OF the wires would obtrude
itself upon his notice, gradually becoming
more and more insistent, until IL fairly
drowned the message and compelled him I'd
click open his key once again.
II became 80 persistent after awhile that
he dreaded to take his seat before the
sounder and finally gave up his position
and entered a new and untried field at the
age Of 4S to escape from its maddening in
fluence.
With others the song varies from night
10 night, or from day to day. Sometimes
it takes the shape Of ragtime melody. II
not always is the tenor cf the message
he is receiving that forces the involuntary
smile to the lips Of the operator 1t is
quite as likely, If he is an old hand at the
business to be some scene recalled by the
melody Of the wires as they sing Their
own weird song to his discerning ears. II
is frequent cause a experienced operators
quitting the service and seeking other EN-.
ployment. It MT only Is annoying to the
victim, but dangerous TO his mentality in
that 1t suggests increasingly the presence
Of an unseen and unknowable entity-it
speaks OF persistent self-deception and
hallucinatiOn, causing the victim to doubt
the processes Of his own mind and the evil
dence Of his own senses.-Chicago Tribune