margins : telautography (original) (raw)

Clokey, Allison A. "Telegraphy." in Pender, Harold and Knox McIlwain, eds. Electrical Engineers' Handbook : Electric Communication and Electronics (Wiley Handbook Series, 1936) : 11:01-35 (includes section on "telautograph system" as distinct from "facsimile transmission."

Clokey's schematic illustration shows the essentials of the telautograph systems described by Foster Ritchie (1899 GB 24,048) and George S Tiffany (1910 US 954,150), all based on Elisha Gray's patents, some of which are presented below. Yet Clokey's account

Yet as we shall see, several manifestations of the Gray system relied not on rheostats and current variations. Some of the patents incorporate a regular sequence — something like a "beat" — of polarized impulses that were less susceptible to induction and other line influences; moreover, the Gray system (and others) eventually would separate those signals from the power needed to actuate the mechanism, by means of relays. Each patent associated with Gray or with his companies represented some kind of improvement on its predecessors; the system did seem to stabilize in the 1920s, however.

Telautograph (and much later Electrowriter) devices were used for intraoffice communications. The Dead Media and Office Museum websites listed below refer to their use in hospitals and clinics, insurance firms, hotels (front desk to housekeeping), banks, train dispatching, and even as a link between brokerages and cable offices. Telautography was used by the Air Force for dissemination of weather reports ("weather symbols not available on keyboards", writes Guitry). In 1899, then-head of the British Museum Reading Room, Richard Garnett, proposed the introduction of the Telautograph for paging books. Devices would be furnished at the catalogue desks, and patrons would retain a slip of their request. …How vast the improvement in the economy of the Reading Room! Garnett wrote, No more troops of boy attendants, with the inevitable noise and bustle; nothing but the invisible messenger speeding on his silent errand, and the quiet delivery of books at the desks: an un-paralleled scene of perfect physical repose in the midst of intense mental activity. Of course the improvement would not stop with the Reading Room, and ere long all departments would be connected by the writing telegraph. (Richard Garnett, Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography (London: George Allen, 1899) : 257; a transcription can also be found at here.

other references

Dead Media Project, working notes 05.5 (derived from Lewis Coe, The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and its Predecessors in the United States (1993); notes that telautograph systems — specifically Foster Ritchie's 1900 design — were short-range instruments, not dependable over five miles. This shortcoming probably owed to their reliance on "current strength" over lines without repeaters; telegraph signals were more robust in this regard.)

Dead Media Project, working notes 44.7 (discussion of later days of telautograph, 1960s-80s, when it went under the name Electrowriter)

Elisha Gray (Marius Rensen, fax history)

antique communications equipment (Early Office Museum, good on Gray Telautograph system)

"The Telautograph." Manufacturer and Builder 25:4 (April 1893) : 76-77 (link to pageviews at Cornell University, Making of America)

This would seem to be the "much simplified and improved" form of the invention described in The Manufacturer and Builder (April 1893) :

The mechanism by which the movements of the pencil are duplicated is comparatively simple and positive in character, being controlled by a series of impulses sent over the line, constituting what is known among electricians as the "step-by-step" system of operation. We will endeavor to give a simple explanation of the devices employed. ¶ The pencil used at the transmitter has near its point a collar, with two small eyes in its rim. To each of these eyes is attached a fine silken cord, running off in two directions at right angles. Each of these cords passes around a small drum supported on a vertical shaft. Beneath the drum, and attached to the same shaft, is a toothed wheel, so arranged that when either section of the cord winds upon or off of its drum, a number of teeth will pass a given point corresponding to the length of cord so wound or unwound. Thus, if the pencil in its movement winds up one inch of one of the cords, forty of the teeth of the wheel will pass by a given point. Each one of these teeth stands for a single electrical impulse sent over the line, as will later be seen. ¶ The mechanism of the receiving instrument is practically the duplicate of that of the transmitter, but, as previously noted, its motions are purely automatic, being controlled by the electric impulses sent over the line from the transmitter. The receiver is provided with two escapements, which are actuated by polarized relays, and so constructed that each electrical impulse received from the line permits the escapement wheel to feed one step either forward or backward. These escapement wheels are mounted on vertical shafts, which carry drums of the same size as those of the transmitter. The forward or backward movements of the escapement wheels, therefore, are imparted to the drums. To these drums are attached, by means of cords, pen arms of aluminum, which are hinged together at the point where the pen is carried. The writing is done with the point of a small capillary glass tube, to which the ink is fed through one of the aluminum tubes, which is kept supplied from a small reservoir. The point of the glass tube rests upon tbe paper, and when moved over it by the motion of the hinged arms to which it is attached, the ink is caused to flow from it; when it is raised from the paper the ink is retained in the tube by capillarity. ¶ It is not difficult now to understand how the duplication of the writing at the receiving end of the line is effected. When a movement in one direction of one of the toothed wheels of the transmitter is made by the writer, a certain number of electric impulses, according to the length of the line, is sent over the line, and the escapement wheel at the receiver will be given a movement forward or backward, as the case may be, the same distance, carrying the drum around in the direction corresponding to that given by the writer's pencil to the drum at the transmitter.