In 1870 Émile Baudot created a code for telegraphy that used bits in place of dot and dashes. That allowed more words per minute to be transmitted than was possible with morse code.
With Baudot code machines could be built that would automatically decode the signal and type it out as plain english. This technology would be called the teletype machine.
Teletype machines still used this code or variation until they were replaced over a century later.
This is also where the term Baud rate comes from.
With Baudot code machines could be built that would automatically decode the signal and type it out as plain english.
Bonus fact: Those machines could also be used to type out plain French.
Righto. To be fair I should be probably refer to the coded message as a cipher and the decoded message as the translation. Baudot’s original bit system was made for French, it got popular in France and then Britain and eventually the USA. It was later tweaked by another guy so the code put less wear on the machinery verse operators dexterity as Baudot had done. This is called Baudot-Murray code.
would be called the teletype machine
Praise the TTY in all its forms…
At some point in the '80s someone convinced me that “baud” was an acronym for “bits of actual, usable data” and I believed that for far too long.
Sounds like a backronym
Clever but inaccurate. You can try and convince people that the word “bawdy” also came from Baudot because he was a Frenchman that used his improved telegraphy code to share juicy details about the ladies he courted. I can’t say for sure he didn’t do that, what with being a successful Frenchman and all.
My condolences to all those who are unsuccessfully French
We call those Quebecois
Freincels (French Involuntary Celibates)
He literally told him to touch grass.
That’s great.
If we simplified “Baudot” to “baud” why the heck couldn’t we simplify “Fahrenheit?” Sheesh.
simplify “Fahrenheit?”
Celsius.
Why not “cels?”
I mean I usually just say e.g. “30C” instead of “30 degrees celsius”
People say “30F,” too.
But how do we decide when someone’s memorial name should be shortened?
used bits in place of dot and dashes
So instead of a trinary system (dash, dot, pause) where the length of the signal indicated the type, it switched to a simple off/on with no need to delay on each bit? It’s surprising it took so long for someone to come up with that improvement, or was it mainly held up by needing someone to invent technology to automatically encode/decode the stream?
Basically. Dash, dot and pause could vary depending on the operator. Baudot code is more like dividing each second into 5 spaces (so 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, and 5/5 of a second) and sending either a pulse or no pulse at each time period to generate a 5-bit character code.
These early machines used electromagnets and gears to operate so a long pulse, short pulse and pause couldn’t be converted to a system that’d mechanically instruct a machine to convert it to a letter. All the inventions that coded and decoded and printed messages used a proprietary code and not morse code (based on my research.) Since “wire services” usually owned their own lines they could transmit any code they’d like so long as it wasn’t a voltage so high it’d damage the wires (you could also swap polarity.)
With a bit based system it’s much easier to build a machine that can convert those signals into a printer. Theres a few videos online of Baudot type printers being restored and running and you can see how it converts these pulses into movements which select a specific typewriter-letter-hammer before the “print” command slams it against the paper. Really ingenious stuff and amazing they could make these things work using gears, cogs and mechanical linkages.
The first ~10-20 years of telegraphy were the age of morse and typing out code by hand. Ironically, at first they used registers to record the code then translated it but during the Civil War operators figured out they could just transcribe by listening. Then “sounders” were introduced. Post Civil War is when automatic machines started coming around, the first ones using morse code but you’d punch the code into a strip of paper then run it along a set of contacts to send the code quicker than a human could.
During the 1870’s-1880’s the fun really began as multiplexing became possible and precision manufacturing/interchangeable parts allowed way more complex devices to be assembled. Adding machines, typewriters, teletype.
Even the stock ticker system uses a similar method to Baudot’s 5-bit binary. A special signal, not morse code but some other code transmitted by telegraph wire, was used that the ticker was designed to operate on. Those signals drove the mechanisms that rotated the printing wheel so they could print the stock name and price.
Telegraphy is a fun science. Real simple since it’s basically electromagnets clicking. But they really did a lot with that tech and as manufacturing improved and transmission quality improved they started squeezing more signals into a single line (multiplexing) as well as making these teletype devices which could print complete messages as a pretty quick WPM rate. And Baudots code was used right up to the early digital phone era in some cases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug5lUI-hs3s
This video shows a Baudot teletype machine and he explains the basic principles well. It also operates and he shows you how the electromagnet converts the signal pulses to a letter selection via linkages.
You can also hear how fast the signal is as it’s running. No way a human operator could tap that out. The first few decades of telegraphy were human controlled, hence why Morse’s code was popular since it was tailored for human abilities. Once telegraphy got established, lines were run and the technology was generating money you start to see automatic machines come around to speed things up.
The first automatic machines worked by punching the code out on a paper ribbon first, then you ran that message through a special telegraphy key. This allowed Morse code to be sent as fast as possible. Registers were common place since the beginning so recording the signal to be decoded to english was simple. This was the era of “battery rooms”, since it was all DC powered and a proper DC generator hadn’t come around yet. Also the era of rooms filled with operators, often women, coding messages into punch-card-ribbons to be sent and decoding register ribbon into english.
Post Civil War we see all of this mature into new coding methods, multiplexing (where Edison made his first fortune), binary transmission systems like Baudot code and eventually transmission of voice. Ironically, Alexander Graham Bell was working on a multiplexing telegraph device (harmonic telegraph that used 4 tuned forks to send multiple codes of various frequency that 4 tuned receiver forks could receive independently of each other across a single line) when he figured out voice could be sent.
One of these tuning forks metal reed had become struck to the electromagnet and Watson plucked it free. Bell, in another room, heard his devices corresponding fork undulate when it was plucked free. He didn’t hear the solid pulse you’d normally hear, he heard it undulate. Bell had studied hearing his whole life (his wife was deaf) so he understood immediately when he heard the undulation that sound could be sent electrically. So he gave up the harmonic telegraph (which didn’t work well because tuning forks were finicky as hell–it wouldn’t be until vacuum tubes came around that it became practical) and started working on the telephone.
Lots of fun history. A distinct period of innovation in the broader Industrial Revolution. When a guy who could understand mechanical movements could invent something that’d make him like $800,000.
Thanks for all the interesting details!
A telegraph “operate”? Did you mean operator?
Haha damn. Good eye. Even proofread it twice. 😑
