The Instructograph was a paper tape-based machine used for the study of Morse code.
Morse code is a character encoding scheme used in telecommunication that encodes text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations called dots and dashes or dits and dahs. Morse code is named for Samuel F. B. Morse, an inventor of the telegraph.
The paper tape mechanism consisted of two reels which passed a paper tape across a reading device that actuated a set of contacts which changed state dependent on the presence or absence of hole punches in the tape. The contacts could operate an audio oscillator for the study of International Morse Code (used by radio), or a sounder for the study of American Morse Code (used by railroads), or a light bulb (Aldis Lamp - used by Navy ship to ship or by Heliograph).
A heliograph is a wireless telegraph that signals by flashes of sunlight reflected by a mirror. The flashes are produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror, or by interrupting the beam with a shutter. The heliograph was a simple but effective instrument for instantaneous optical communication over long distances during the late 19th and early 20th century. Its main uses were military, survey and forest protection work. Heliographs were standard issue in the British and Australian armies until the 1960s, and were used by the Pakistani army as late as 1975.
The Instructograph was in production from about 1920 through 1983. The first US patent, No. 1,725,145, was granted to Otto Bernard Kirkpatrick, of Chicago, IL, on August 20, 1929. Most of them would be wound by hand or be plugged into a wall outlet. Most plugin outlet based instructographs would have a set of knobs that can control the speed and volume. The latest version of the Instructograph was the model 500 which included a built in solid state oscillator. This model was available to be purchased as new through at least 1986.
An electrical telegraph is a telegraph that uses coded electrical signals to convey information via dedicated electrical wiring. Electrical telegraphy dates from the early 1800s, and is distinct from the later electrical telephony, which uses the analogue magnitude of electrical signals to convey information.
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of textual or symbolic messages without the physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not.
A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation that defines an abstract machine, which manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model's simplicity, given any computer algorithm, a Turing machine capable of simulating that algorithm's logic can be constructed.
A teleprinter is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initially they were used in telegraphy, which developed in the late 1830s and 1840s as the first use of electrical engineering. The machines were adapted to provide a user interface to early mainframe computers and minicomputers, sending typed data to the computer and printing the response. Some models could also be used to create punched tape for data storage and to read back such tape for local printing or transmission.
Wireless telegraphy means transmission of telegraph signals by radio waves; a more specific term for this is radiotelegraphy. Before about 1910 when radio became dominant, the term wireless telegraphy was also used for various other experimental technologies for transmitting telegraph signals without wires, such as electromagnetic induction, and ground conduction telegraph systems.
Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data. Now effectively obsolete, it was widely used during much of the twentieth century for teleprinter communication, for input to computers of the 1950s and 1960s, and later as a storage medium for minicomputers and CNC machine tools.
In the history of cryptography, the ECM Mark II was a cipher machine used by the United States for message encryption from World War II until the 1950s. The machine was also known as the SIGABA or Converter M-134 by the Army, or CSP-888/889 by the Navy, and a modified Navy version was termed the CSP-2900.
Ticker tape was the earliest digital electronic communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use between around 1870 through 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called a stock ticker, which printed abbreviated company names as alphabetic symbols followed by numeric stock transaction price and volume information. The term "ticker" came from the sound made by the machine as it printed.
A tonewheel or tone wheel is a simple electromechanical apparatus for generating electric musical notes in electromechanical organ instruments such as the Hammond Organ. It was invented around 1910 by Rudolph Goldschmidt and was first used in pre vacuum tube radio receivers as a beat frequency oscillator (BFO) to make continuous wave radiotelegraphy signals audible.
A telegraph code is one of the character encodings used to transmit information through telegraphy machines. The most famous such code is Morse code.
The Friden Flexowriter was a teleprinter, a heavy-duty electric typewriter capable of being driven not only by a human typing, but also automatically by several methods, including direct attachment to a computer and by use of paper tape.
The TSEC/KL-7 was an off-line non-reciprocal rotor encryption machine. The KL-7 had rotors to encrypt the text, most of which moved in a complex pattern, controlled by notched rings. The non-moving rotor was in fourth from the left of the stack. The KL-7 with 12 rotors also encrypted the message indicator and was code named ADONIS.
The Teletype Model 33 is an electromechanical teleprinter designed for light-duty office. It is less rugged and less expensive than earlier Teletype machines. The Teletype Corporation introduced the Model 33 as a commercial product in 1963 after being originally designed for the US Navy. There are three versions of the Model 33:
The syphon or siphon recorder is an obsolete electromechanical device used as a receiver for submarine telegraph cables invented by William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin in 1867. It automatically records an incoming telegraph message as a wiggling ink line on a roll of paper tape. Later a trained telegrapher would read the tape, translating the pulses representing the "dots" and "dashes" of the Morse code to characters of the text message.
The Teletype Corporation, a part of American Telephone and Telegraph Company's Western Electric manufacturing arm since 1930, came into being in 1928 when the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company changed its name to the name of its trademark equipment. Teletype Corporation, of Skokie, Illinois, was responsible for the research, development and manufacture of data and record communications equipment, but it is primarily remembered for the manufacture of electromechanical teleprinters.
KPH is a public coast radio station on the West Coast of the United States. For most of the 20th century, it provided ship to shore communications including telegrams and marine telex service. The station discontinued commercial operation in 1998, but is operated occasionally as a historic service - its signal can be tuned in throughout a large portion of the western hemisphere.
Survival radios are carried by ships and aircraft to facilitate rescue in an emergency. They are generally designed to transmit on international distress frequencies. Maritime systems have been standardized under the Global Maritime Distress Safety System.
A Fessenden oscillator is an electro-acoustic transducer invented by Reginald Fessenden, with development starting in 1912 at the Submarine Signal Company of Boston. It was the first successful acoustical echo ranging device. Similar in operating principle to a dynamic voice coil loudspeaker, it was an early kind of transducer, capable of creating underwater sounds and of picking up their echoes.
The Teletype Model 28 is a product line of page printers, typing and non-typing tape perforator and tape reperforators, fixed head single contact and pivoted head multi-contact transmitter-distributors, and receiving selector equipment. Regarded as the most rugged machines Teletype Corporation built, this line of teleprinters used an exchangeable type box for printing and sequential selector "Stunt Box" to mechanically initiate non-printing functions within the typing unit of the page printer, electrically control functions within the page printer and electrically control external equipment.