Episode 65 - Teletype, Teleprint, and Telegrams

Edward Hytten's 'The Electric Telegraph: Its History and Progress' is a contemporary 19th-century account that traces the origins and technical advances of telegraphy. It covers early signaling methods, the emergence of electric telegraph instruments, and accounts of notable inventors and systems of the era. The book blends historical narrative with technical description, making it useful both to historians and early practitioners. Hytten's work captures how electromagnetic devices like galvanometers and electromagnets enabled practical telegraph systems. It remains a valuable primary-source overview for understanding telegraph development in the mid-1800s.

Donald Murray's 'Setting Type by Telegraph' outlines his design and rationale for a perforating keyboard, fixed-length 5-bit code, and automated teleprinter systems that replaced manual Morse conversion. Written from the perspective of a journalist-inventor, it explains how machine abstraction of encoding simplified telegraph operation and improved efficiency. The piece discusses how punched paper tape, synchronous transmission, and control characters like carriage return and line feed made automatic teleprinting feasible. Murray argues that operators should need only standard typewriting skills, facilitating adoption. His ideas influenced later teleprinter standards and the adoption of QWERTY keyboards in telegraphic equipment.