telegraph?

Question

How does an electric telegraph work? And what's the purpose of it?

Answer 1

It is a system by which electrical clicks or buzzes are sent over long distances to communicate letters and numbers

Now out of date , it was how people communicated BEFORE TELEPHONES


Telegraph poles now support telephone wires but once they were the wires from station to station ( telegraph station that is) or Telegraph office to office
When a electrical connection was made at one office , using a key switch then a click was or buzz was heard in the other office a long way away ( Morse Key ... look it up)

A Samuel Morse developed a code of long and short sounds ( dot and dashes or dit and dahs) to represent numbers and letters ... latter even puctuation and abbreviations were added

MORSE code became the standard system of sending messages via wire and on off key sounds

here are some of the things that have become part of our language as a result

In the U SA, to wire someone was to send them a TELEGRAPH message


SOS .... the international distress call ... - - - ...
dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit

To " telegraph" an event or plot = to show what is going to happen by what has been said or done before .

if you want to try MORSE CODE, and hear what it sounds like go here

morsecode.scphillips.com

Answer 2

How Does A Telegraph Work

Answer 3

from 1840 to 1940 the electrical telegraph was the principle method used to transmit telegrams. It was a simple system requiring only a key (switch), sounder, electricity and connecting wires. An experienced operator could send and receive by ear the Morse code at speeds faster than is possible to write legibly. Around 1900 the mill was invented. It was a kind of typewriter that printed on continuous tapes instead of paper sheets. this brought the speed of circuits up to about 40 words per minute. the tape was cut and pasted onto the standard telegram form. starting in 1930 morse code circuits were phased out and replaced with baudot code mechanical teletype machines. These worked at about 60 wpm and did not require special operator training beyond an ability to type.

The telegram allowed written messages to be sent anywhere in the civilized world, for a price. The first users were railroads which exchanged rights-of-way for telegraph wires for sending train operation orders.

Answer 4

As the word “Tele-graph” states it was an invention to send a message in a graphical way (written on paper) over a long distance. The sender had a Morse key - a momentary push button like device that was transmitting sort and long periods of electrical DC current on-off. At the receiving side there was a drum with s paper strip (not unlike the film drums in a cinema) the paper (half an inch wide) was transported by a clockwork mechanism wish a speed of about one inch per second. When at the sender's side the key was pressed, the telegraph receiver had an electromagnetic solenoid that pressed an ink pen down to the paper. A spring lifted the pen from the paper when the key was not pressed. A short pressing of the Morse key resulted in a very short dash, interpreted as a dot. A longer pressing of the key resulted in a longer dash. Those combinations of dots and dashes separated by longer blank spaces were interpreted by the telegraph officer as letters of the alphabet and transcribed in handwriting to a form. Like this it was possible to transmit a message in writing.
Later the telegraph used mechanical encoding by a keyboard and motor-driven rotation encoder to code in five bits of mark and space (current / no-current) a set of either all capital letters or else (when shifted) all numbers and special characters. This was a repertoire of two times 30 characters.
The 31st and 32nd reserved to transmit the "shift" and "unshift signal". This mechanism is called Baudot coding. It was in use from the 30's to the 70's. It allowed sending and receiving "clear language text" by telegraph officers who did not have to know any Morse code.

Answer 5

If you mean the old electric telegraph as in westerns, then that telegraph transmitted signals from one area to another on telegraph wires as electric signals.
The signal or morse code is sent from a hand operated electric device.
When the originating machine was tapped, a similar machine at the other end would make a noise that was similar (dit & dat).

Answer 6

Telegraph circuits were DC circuits with devices at each end. One device, the key, would open and close the circuit. This caused a sounder at the other end to double click. The time between the first and second click was either short or long. A short time meant a dot. A long time meant a dash. Spacing between double clicks was either short or long. A short spacing indicated going from one letter to another in a word. A long click meant end of word.

Later buzzers were used instead of clicks. Still later ticker tapes were used, to record the dots and dashes..