Evening star., 1932-05-01
Thirty for Morse Telegraphers
BY FREDERIC J. HASKIN.

In less than a decade more than half
of the old Morse code telegraphers,
once among the most picturesque fig
ures of American journeyman life, have
been displaced by the invasion Of auto
matte machines, while steady technical
improvements in telegraph equipment
threaten the remainder. No new gen.
Grafton Of the type Is coming on be-
! cause there is no place for 1t.
A study by the United States Bureau
! of Labor Statistics shows how the var
| ious automatic machines and systems,
| notably the n1ultiplex printer, have
displaced some 8,466 Morse operators.
Outstanding among those displaced are
the most picturesque of all. the press
| telegraphers, men who since the days
| of the Civil War have been an integral
part of the newspaper business. In
many a newspaper office the press
| telegrapher was a peculiar type of
genius, often eccentric, often erudite,
invariably interesting, about whom
hung a bright, particular glamour.
| Where once he sat, sometimes with
his feet on the table, smoking pipe or
cigarette and spilling comments over his
| shoulder even in the midst of sending
or receiving, now stands a noisy, clank-
| ing instrument, impersonal as a fire.
alarm box, which bangs out pages of
purple-typed copy with weary mo-
notony. First there was the old-fash-
ioned key operator-the type that
handled the dispatches of Murat Hal
stead and Marse Henry Watterson-
who wrote out what the instrument
ticked of in a flowing spencerian
hand, oft SuperfuouSly ornamented
rr{@I, A-in of he ~
sentences or paragraphs. His instru-
ment was fixed to table-a fat hori-
zontal key that looked like tiddly-
wink connected with a brass lever
Then the bug was invented. 1t was
discovered that skilled operators did
not need the precise impulses Of the
fixed key; they learned to receive sig
mails which constituted a sort OF Morse
shorthand. The bug was not fixed to
the table; indeed most operators owned
their own bugs and carried them about
with them or to and from work. The
bug is an instrument, STILL of course
in use, which has a vertically set key.
The operator presses it horizontally,
with gentle, delicate impulses and it
vibrates delicately. 1t is easier on the
operator, less likely to af1ict him with
that malady, peculiar to telegraphy
W Wiz "a CAV 90 6Aeseo esAA0 40
much faster.
Characteristic Touch.
The sound box, the receiving instru-
ment, either had an empty tobacco can
hung nonchalantly over 1t to impart
Just the right vibratory note-or the
operator using it was not quite regular.
Not all the ingenuity of Edison's lab
oratories, not all the wizardry of
Schenectady, not even the shade of
Samuel F. B. Morse himself could in
vent anything which ever could pos
! sibly take the place of that draped to-
bacco can in the estimation of the free
masonry of American press operators.
1t was to them what his three plumes
are to the Prince of Wales.
When the wire was still the operator
seldom was. He had a fund Of tales
equaling anything out of Baron
Munchausen'S bag and told them with
gusto difficult to excel In inspired
profanity he was the rival and often
the superior of the foreman of the
composing room, and that is no faint
praise. If he hadn't been in the Johns
town Flood, he was in the Philippines
in the days of the empire, or in the