The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-08-01
Pictured on the Left Ia a Dream of Yesterday But . Reality of Today
 the teIetype!
On the right is shown Manager Beebe Of the
 local exchange, the
 girls, the ScFSpbOoks.

AU WnB OWhHCUb hDBWV VI AAS Telephone Bulletin" appear two illustrated articles of unusual Ws- terbuFy interest. One deals with the discovery of the Grand dad. dy" of the present teletypewriter among the apparently forgotten souvenirs of by.gOne days In the attIc of the Plume C Atwood plant in ThOmaston. An interesting story accompanies the photograph of the interesting device.
 The second dlSclOges unusual ills tercSt taken by s. N. '. Telephone company's employees ln scrap books.
 Through the courtesy of the Bulletin the Democrat is happy Co reprint the stories and reproduce the interesting photos.
 Would you be surprised to know there was teletypewriter service back in the l070'S? No more sur. prlsed than we were anyway. It wasn't called Q teletypewriter, but certainly the 0ray'S Automatic Printer shown to us 6 while ago was the grandfather of the mod ern teietypewriter-or perhaps one of its great uncleS.
 Mir. g. Kellogg Plume, vice. president of the Plume and Ats wood Manufacturing Company, who have plants ct Waterbury and Thomaston, discovered the machine, still in excellent condi. ton, hidden away in the attic of the Thomaston plant. Bob Tehan, Waterbury salesman, saw tt one day when he visited the plant, and that's how we learned about t. It's the only one we know of outside the Bell System Historical Museum.
 Manufactured By Western
 A plate attached to the cast iron base of the machine reads, Made by the Western Electric Manu. facturing Company, Patented No. vember 12, 1872" We've since learned that the printer was manufactured by Western prin. ariiy for the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company, Q subsidiary of the Western Union. A Western Electric catalogue issued in 1878 tells us that the printer was "de. signed for use on private teles graph lines and for police and other municipal lines," and goes on to say that 1t is "self .starting, self.stoppIng, Self.correCting. Any person who knows how to write and to read can use it. The Send- ing operator prints out his mess. age in plain letters ct the distant end of the line whether the TO. ceiving operator is ct his instru. ment or not. The message is also printed by the transmitting in. strument." Almost c word for word description of the present day telctype.
 Installed About 1876
 According to that same cate. logue of 1878 the, expense of equip ping Q private line of five miles or less with one instrument at each end was about S300, not including the building of the line. MT. Kel- logg tells us that, although he was but c boy when the machines were first used ct the Plume and At- wood Company, he remembers in- cidentS in connection with the in. stallation of the. machines and thinks 1t was about 1876 or 1877. Two machines sent messages back and forth between the Waterbury and ThomaSton plants, about ten miles apart. The Waterbury ma chine, however, no longer exists.
 A picture of the machine in the Western catalogue of which the Thomaston machine B the exact counterpart except for two glass protecting domeS covering the mechanism, shows two small wheels beneath the reel on top which held the tape. The upper wheel is an ink roller which, com- ing in contact with the lower wheel, inked the raised letter on the lower wheels rim. The tape passed beneath the letter wheel which turned to the proper letter and printed 1t when Q key on .the keyboard was depressed.