Daily Arizona silver belt., 1910-04-22
Mining and Financial News
CRANK MAKERS OF
 DOTS AND DASHES
Music of Hand Organ Makes
 Them Hostile


 Professor S. F. B. Morse, inventor of the electric telegraph, is said to have been the first man to whom the appel lation of "crank" was applied, and though he made the word mean genius, it still clings to the profession.
 All telegraph operators are not cranks, and they are not all numbered among the genii of the key; but no oth- CT profession has been so successful in bringing out the eccentric character of those inclined to be cranky, and few vacations have developed more true ge- nius.
 Many of the men who made history first made dots and dashes, and today it is difficult to find group of men en- gagged in an important undertaking that does not include one or more who start. ed their career at the telegraph key.
 Photographers are usually high strung nervous men, and soon develop eccen tricities that cause them to be consid- cred cranky. There used to be an oper- ator employed by Washington news paper who earned the appellation of crank because whistling in the office so affected him that he could not work. His case, however, was not an isolated one; for it is well known that music of any kind has peculiar effect upon tel egraphers. A small boy whistling a popular air will stop practically every instrument in telegraph office. Dots and flashes become meaningless jumbles of sounCs, and the operators lose all idea of their meaning. All operators are affected more or less by musIc; but those who have a natural ear for mel ody have the hardest time when band passes the office.
 It is not the noise thaC smothers the sound of the instrument. The din on the field of a sham battle, the hoarse cheering of a political convention, and the busy babble of voices in the Stock exchange have no effect upon him So long as he can hear the tick of the in- strument. He will even carry on a conversation while receiving a message, or watch thrilling plays in baseball game without breaking; but let the plaintive strains from a hand organ float up from the street below and he is all at sea- The reason for this may be found in the fact that there is kind of musical rhythm in the ticking of the Morse characters which is accentuated in musical ear. The tempo of the air played by the organ or band or whistled by the small boys upsets the rhythm of the ticking instrument, and in his effort to keep the dots and dashes from falling into the swing of the rival mu sic the operator loses their meaning.
 Not all operators are affected by mu- sic, however, probably because there are some men who have no ear at all for music, and are, therefore, able to keep the dots and dashes in line and prevent them from joining in with the band.
 The man who beat Joseph F. Gala gher for the message championship ot the world in 1904 was one of this class. Gallagher was one of the star operators who held the receiving championship. He won in the contest at Philadelphia Tn 1908; but lost it the next year be- cause the band at Madison Square played "Dixie" during the contest. His opponent was sOutherner with no ear for music; so, instead of confusing him, the strains of the patriotic air inspired him to greater effort, while Gallagher was laundering around, hopeless lost
 Old operators are cranky about work ing Saturday nights; at least the unini- tiated say they have cranky idea about the wires becoming tired. Youngsters say the trouble is in the waning strength of the aged arms that plays out toward the end of the week, and not the wire; but the older men shake their heads and talk about the saturation of the wires by the constant flow of current over them. Electromag. nets are said to be rendered useless by too much current, which saturates them, and the same theory is applied to tele- graph wires by these cranky old opera tors. Practically every telegraph oper- ator has some "queer" notion regard ing his profession or some part of the implements with which he works; but they are discovered only by close asso. citation.
 The choicest bit of slang of the age lay concealed in the ticks of their in struments for years before George Co., nan rescued it and put it to work in one of his musical comedies. Telegraph operators have been saying "23'' to each other over the wire for a number of years, but no one knew anything about it. A great many people are still unaware of the fact that this bit of slang originated with telegraph operat- ors; for only short time ago writer ventured the opinion that the term "23' was of biblical origin, and cited the twenty-third verse of the sixteenth chapter of Matthew as the probable Dlacp