Any persevering boy can soon learn the dot-and-dash letters of the Morse code, and very quickly become a fairly good operator. Telegraphic messages are sent and received in this way, and are read by the sound of the clicks. Various kinds of recording instruments are also employed, so that when an operator is away from his table the automatic recorder takes down the message on a paper tape. In the stock-ticker, employed in brokerage offices, the recording is done by letters and numerals, and the paper tape drops into a basket beside the machine, so that any one picking up the strip of paper can see the quotations from the opening of business up to the time of reading them. These quotations are sent out directly from the floor of the exchanges, and by the action of one man’s hand thousands of machines are set in operation all over the city.
Perhaps the most unique and wonderful telegraphic signal-apparatus is that located on the floor of the New York Produce Exchange and the Chicago Exchange. The dials, side by side, are operated by direct wire from Chicago. When the New York operator flashes a quotation it appears simultaneously on the New York dial and simultaneously on the Chicago dial, and vice versa.
Electrical instruments are not the only means by which the Morse alphabet may be transmitted, for in some instances instruments would be in the way, while in others the wires might be down and communication cut off.
This is interestingly illustrated by an event in Thomas A. Edison’s life. When he was a boy and an apprentice telegraph operator on the Grand Trunk Line, an ice-jam had broken the cable between Port Huron, in Michigan, and Sarnia, in Canada, so that communication by electricity was cut off. The river at that point is a mile and a half wide, the ice made the passage impossible, and there was no way of repairing the cable. Edison impulsively jumped on a locomotive standing near the river-bank and seized the whistle-cord.
He had an idea that blasts of the whistle might be broken into long and short sounds corresponding to the dots and dashes of the Morse code. In a moment the whistle sounded over the river: “Toot, toot, toot, toot,—toot, tooooot,—tooooot—tooooot—toot, toot—toot, toot.” “Halloo, Sarnia! Do you get me? Do you hear what I say?”
No answer.
“Do you hear what I say, Sarnia?”
A third, fourth, and fifth time the message went across, to receive no response. Then suddenly the operator at Sarnia heard familiar sounds, and, opening the station door, he clearly caught the toot, toot of the far-away whistle. He found a locomotive, and, mounting to the cab, responded to Edison, and soon messages were tooted back and forth as freely as though the parted cable were again in operation.
Some years ago the police of New York were mystified over a murder case. The man they suspected had not fled, but was still in his usual place, and attending to his business quite as though nothing had happened to connect him with the tragedy.