Telegraphers Paralysis

[NW Mailing List]

Abram

Thank you for the learned dissertation on this topic.  Far more interesting than my scraping of the surface with Google.   I always come away from your replies more informed on the subject at hand. 

Jim Stapleton

On Dec 6, 2024, at 13:45, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:

Herr Gootmann, Commander of the Ohio Mounted Hussars, doth inquire about "Telegrapher's Paralysis." It was also known as "Telegrapher's Glass Arm." In today's world, it is called Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

The malady of the telegrapher is that every time he presses down on a hand key (to close it,) he is fighting the spring, and when his fingers remove the pressure from the key, his arm is fighting gravity again, to raise the hand vertically. Doing this millions upon millions of times causes nerve damage, and eventually the muscles can no longer function as required.

Here are some numbers: 126 up/down cycles of the hand are required to send the English Alphabet on a hand key. (This is in the American Morse Code used by railroads, NOT the code now called "International," which was written by Friedrich Clemens Gerke, an Austrian and now used in radio beep-beep. These two codes are worlds apart in every respect.)

Based on the common belief that the average English word is about 5 letters in length, and based on average letter frequency distribution (E being the most frequently used letter, J, Z and Q being the least frequently used letters,) 29.6 up/down operations of the hand are required to send the "average" 5-letter English word.

The average railroad telegrapher worked somewhere between 30 and 35 words per minute. At the rather liesurly speed of 30 words per minute, 888.45 up/down cycles of the hand per minute are required to send ordinary English text.  That is 19.745 up/down strokes per second.

The average Western Union or Press telegrapher of the late 19th Century worked close to 40 words per minute, eight or ten or twelve hours a day.  Those fellows were paid on a bonus basis, so they went as fast as possible.  At 40 WPM, the sending of standard text requires 1184.6 operations of the telegraph key per minute, or 19.745 operations per second.  And that is about as fast as they could go, using the old hand keys.  The trade journals were full of reports of good men "burning out" with telegrapher's paralysis.

In 1904, a clever New York telegrapher named Horace Martin conceived the notion of changing the plane of operation for a telegraph key from vertical to horizontal.  This overcame the problem of the telegraph operator "fighting gravity" on every stroke of his hand.  Martin changed the orientation of the electrical contacts from over/under to side-by-side.  Then he created a metal flat spring (perhaps fashioned from a hacksaw blade.) The flat spring functioned like the pendulum of a clock. Once stroked by the fingers, this pendulum would continue to vibrate horisontally, back and forth, left-to-right, closing a contact on each vibration, so that five Dots (the letter P) or six dots (the numeral 6) could be made by one horizontal movement of the fingers.  Dashes (longer closures of the circuit) were made by moving the operating lever to the opposite direction.

Martin's new key was a flaming success. Mechanically, it was classified as a semi-automatic telegraph key. Martin named his company the Vibroplex company and his trademark was the lightning bug, so the new semi-automatic keys came to be called simply "bugs," and that name stuck.

The new "bug" keys could be had for $5, and Martin sold them to students at his cost. Soon every telegrapher wanted one. And since sending was now so easy and so fast, the speeds on the premier New York brokerage circuits reportedly climbed to nearly 50 WPM. Contests were held and rewards were offered for the fastest sending and receiving.

The last brokerage wire was operated by one of the big brokerage houses between New York and Philadelphia, and was closed down around 1960, when the two old telegraphers wanted to retire and there were no replacements to be found. Railroads continued using the Morse Telegraph into the 1970s, in a few places. The B&O's Morse Telegraph line between Rockwood, Pa and Cumberland, Md, over the Sand Patch Grade, remained in service (but largely un-used) until August 1984, when a big storm knocked out the pole line and the telegraph circuit was not restored.

I have an operating Telegraph circuit in my home, and it is available 24 hours a day.  Most of us who use it to communicate just lope along at about 30 WPM... Why rush?  We are all about 80 years of age and we do not want to get Telegrapher's Paralysis ! Sometimes we use the hand key, and sometimes we use the Vibroplex "bug."  I can "read the wire" at 30-35 WPM without paying any attention and while doing something else.  But for anything faster, I must concentrate on the clicks of the telegraph sounder.

Two photos are attached. One shows a hand key. The other shows the two Vibroplex "bugs" I use.. One bug is used in SW, the basement telegraph office, the other is used upstairs in ND Telegraph Office, where my PC is located. And since most people today have little idea what a telegraph sounder is (the thing that makes the clicks,) the third attachment will show one of those (an 1873 model.)  Man Toys... or perhaps Man Delusions.

-- abram burnett
Turnips and Telegraph - the Spices of Life