Fig. 5 Kleinschmidt Telegraph Typewriters(installation at Brooklyn Union Gas Co.)
CHAPTER 3
KRUM AND MORTON
(MORKRUM)
Mark Morton, head of the Western Cold Storage Company in Chicago, and cold-storage engineer Charles L. Krum, the vice president of the firm, entered the telegraph field quite by accident. A young electrical engineer named Frank Pearne, in 1902, had some ideas for a printing telegraph machine and needed financial backing to carry on his experiments. One of his contacts happened to be Joy Morton, the founder of the Morton Salt Company. Joy Morton became interested enough to become Pearne’s backer, and prevailed upon brother Mark to set up a laboratory in the attic of the cold-storage plant for Pearne’s experiments.
It seems that after a year or so, Pearne lost interest in his invention and went into the teaching field. He proved to be a very successful professor at Armour Tech where he remained until his death.[3] But Pearne’s work was not in vain, for Charles L. Krum had become intensely interested and carried on the work with further inventions of his own. Indeed, he filed his first patent application on August 20, 1903, which proposed the use of a code comprising four signals: a positive pulse or a negative pulse of low voltage, and a positive or negative pulse of a higher voltage. Four additional patents were filed, the last in 1906.
C. L. Krum then set about building a machine which was demonstrated in 1906 and looked promising enough to form a company to further develop it. This company was made up of the Mortons (brothers Joy and Mark) and the Krums (Charles L. and his son Howard who had just finished college). The combination of their names, of course, resulted in “The Morkrum Company,” which was incorporated in the State of Maine on October 7, 1907. The charter stockholders were Joy Morton, who shouldered the greatest financial burden; Charles Krum; Joy Morton’s secretary, Daniel Peterkin (he later became an officer of the Morkrum Company); Mark Morton; and Sterling Morton (Joy’s son, of whom we shall be hearing more later on). The working capital of the new company amounted to $150,000.00.
Charles Krum’s son Howard, after graduation, joined with his father in the developmental work of this new company and, due to his studies in electrical engineering, was able to help his father considerably. His first love and intended career was music, but he put this aside in favor of his father’s telegraph printer. However, a tune on the piano which he always kept in the laboratory would help him solve many a difficult problem.
In 1908 the Krums developed and produced a working model of the four-unit-code, plus-minus, high-low-voltage system, which was applied to operate the mechanism of an Oliver typewriter. The system was then given an operative test on the wires of the Chicago and Alton Railroad, of which Joy Morton was a director.
As their research work progressed, Howard studied the various systems in current use and, with his father, decided to abandon the plus-minus, high-low-voltage system. They turned instead to a system using the five-unit permutation code as employed by Baudot in his multiplex telegraph in which synchronized terminal apparatus with periodic correction was the controlling feature.
Their first joint patent describes a plan for accomplishing synchronized reception with transmission using a system of five relays interconnected to operate in successive cascade form; thus, when the relays at both terminals are correctly timed for successive operation, they will transmit and receive the five pulse combinations of the Baudot code. For transmitting and receiving the code pulses, each of the five relays has an additional contact. To start the relay cascade operation, a start relay is added at both terminals and operated by a start pulse which precedes each code transmission. It seemed natural for the Krums to turn to a relay system at first, since, from his work with the three-unit-code, high-low-voltage system, C. L. Krum was experienced with the possibilities of relay operation.
The system of the relay chain in cascade operation was employed to operate a page printer using the mechanisms of the Blickensdoerfer typewriter which had a three-row typewheel. The Postal Telegraph Company became interested and bought a number of these printers in 1910. This was the first sale of Morkrum apparatus and provided enthusiasm for the Krums for further research, which led to the substitution of a governed-motor-driven brush distributor to replace the relay cascade system. For this new plan the motor at the receiving printer operated at a slightly higher speed and was held in continuously synchronous operation with the transmitter by the periodic transmission of a correcting pulse. The new code selecting and printer control system was also adapted to operate the mechanism of the Blickensdoerfer typewheel typewriter. The idea worked out better than the cascade relay system, and a number of printers using this method were constructed and named the “Morkrum Blue Code.” A few were put in service at the Postal Telegraph Company.