So, what you're getting at is, these were, if you had the transceiver model, kind of the world's first portable instant messaging app. Eat your heart out, AOL
The stone age never really ended in a lot of places. There are places in this world today where you can blow people's minds with things like a magnetic compass, lighter, steel butter knife, etc.
What an amazing piece of history you have! It can be said that I own an extensive collection of telegraph equipment and I can honestly say I’ve never seen one of these!
you said you have an extensive collection of telegraph related items, I'm looking for a spring to repair a 1905 Marconi spark gap the part I need is the tension spring, it's approximately a half inch diameter at the base and then tapers to meet the tension screw, probably a little over 3/8 to a half an inch high. Any idea where we might find something like this?
100% that is for covert listening to the telegraph communications - which would justify its high price. I mean secret stock trades, corporate financial info etc used to go down the lines unencrypted.
I don't think so, tbh. A clandestine device would allow you to tap the line and only skim a tiny bit of current. It would probably allow you to convert transmission wire into some kind of coil that drove a very small and lightweight deflector. This device requires you to sever the connection to one station or the other. You could possibly use this as part of a clandestine repeater/intercept station, but you would need some kind of keying device to transmit traffic further on.
You need to contact a railroad telegraphy club. Telegraph keying and sounding has had a resurgence lately. Railroad telegraphy historians could tell you exactly the purpose and operation of your little sounder. I’m betting it was carried by conductors and could easily be plugged in the line on a station platform to monitor schedule times and adjustments. Most railway office and dispatch workers new code in the 1870s into the 1940s.
The screws are the same as the screws on a full size sounder where the gap and the spring are used to get a good sound at whatever voltage or current is supplied where you make the connection. Electromagnet field strength is determined only by current and number of turns, and telegraph systems are designed based on current. There were no voltage amplifiers until later.
@@tsm688 Correct. In a many miles long single wire (Earth return telegraph) the voltage drops with distance due to the resistance of the wire, but in a circuit the current in equals current out and you have the same current everywhere and the signalling works at any place along the line.
Yes it does! I could see James and Artemis connecting to Telegraph lines, sending messages so they could foil Dr Lovelace's evil genius plans to kidnap the President (yet again).
No they didn't. The things that were made a long time ago that are still around today we're obviously well made, but there are countless things were made a long time ago that are no longer around. All the disposable stuff made today isn't going to last but there are many things built today that are made to last decades or even centuries. Don't make the mistake of looking at an antique and concluding that we don't make things anymore that will last that long.
@@nagualdesign I find it interesting that many 'everyday objects' can be found ... I would expect specialty items to last, but something as simple as a hairbrush, or razor, is just amazing (I hardly think ours will hold up as well)
@@nagualdesign please come with some examples. I got a lot of old tools from my grandparents that still run and work. So no your argument is not valid i my opinion. So agree, its amazing to see things like this 😊
@@lauriivey7801 i do have a throat cutter / razor from around 1890. I do think that they made things to last for a lifetime until they figure out that they didn't sell enough...
@@jessen00001 I'll give you an analogy. 1000 people are each given a coin to toss. If you get heads you're eliminated. After 10 rounds chances are that only 1 person remains, because that person just got tails 10 times in a row, but *they weren't any better than the other 999 people at tossing a coin.* I guess your grandfather bought decent tools, he looked after them, and he was fortunate. I'm absolutely certain that there were many tools manufactured at the same time, some of them identical to your grandfather's, that did not stand the test of time. And if you bought some decent tools today and looked after they may well last just as long. Some things are built to last, other things aren't.
The important thing with a telegraph armature is current, not voltage. It takes voltage to generate current of course, but without some resistance you can burn out a coil if you're not careful.
You could make a nice wood base so it looks like how you would display a watch, but hide the bluetooth in the base with a couple of pins sticking up, no need to modify the item at all And at that voltage, a lipo battery should work fine ;) Use watch oil for lubrication.
Very interesting little device. I think its a neat idea if these thinfs where popular in a pre phone world. plug your pocket telegraph into a landline and send messages to someone.
My great grandfather had one. The way it worked ( the way he said) is that they would find major telegraph lines and wire tgem through the watch and camp there for a few days. The changes in the telegraph line would do as the video showed. In his deployment he used one to transcribe 27 messages from Morse code. A problem they had though is that they would damage easily from over usage.
Some of these units also have built-in Telegraph keys, or contactors. That would work by pushing down on the adjustment knobs. The connections were made, with a slot that was cut into the bottom of the case. You could slip a bare wire inside of with one connection, the other one was made through a very small phenolic or porcelain insulator with a sleeve that you could put a wire into. Usually there was a set of wires with jumper clips would be carried in your pocket along with it. These were normally carried by signal and test man. Working on Telegraph circuits. As a faster method of pulling out your actual test set that had a line meter a battery, and usually a couple different Sounders to change the line current
It would be useful for anyone repairing telegraph lines, and possibly for someone working on a railroad track if there was a telegraph line running with it.
Well I definitely see it used as a spy gadget I don't think that would be the primary case but I'm sure for the right individual it was useful. It's much more on par with pricing of what a current day fluke would be. There are network testers that are $1500+ that do everything. Then there's some cheaper ones in the $800 to $1000 range that don't do quite as much. And then there's some cheap $10 network testers that almost barely tell you that it's working. I would imagine this is something a technician would carry and it would be small and lightweight. and it may or may not have been owned by the corporation they were working for.
Awsome litle machine. I was thinking, the noise it does when diferent currents, pass throthg it, could not that be used to recieve morse code too ? This could be like a proto pager and later walkie talkie, because, its portable, and you could recieve messages with it. It would be cool to know more about it. Thank you for sharing :D
Interesting find. At first I thought it was some sort of spy equipment. Although there probably wasn't that much spying going on during the Victorian era.
Maybe for display, you ought to turn the coils around if you can? Maybe turn the whole mechanism? As the coils are obviously bleached on the glass side. Or maybe just use a green marker and freshen up the green? You can get very high end water color markers (not the acrylic ones) that was the standard for drawing ads with back in the day, and they come in all sorts of colors. Maybe try to colormatch? Make sure you don't get a paint marker. The thread around the magnet wire will soak up the color with just normal water based ones. That slightly pale bluish green is really nice with the silver!
3:30 it jamming because they used to oil springs, likely the oil has coagulated. But it also might have some form of insulation between the two shafts that’s rotted
When I saw this thumbnail I thought maybe you pressed the top down to make a charge. Or generate one. so depressing it does not make a voltage out the bottom? you are applying voltage to make the coil contract...if not something as simple as a piezo crystal might work. I cant help but think this may be a spy thing as well.
I can imagine these would have been used by Texas Rangers, Marshalls, Railway Men, and others for more than testing. To send messages on the line so that people in the local telegraph office wouldn't know a message was being sent or received.
wow...interesting device, with a lot of style, thanks for showing it, it's strange that you are referring to something "presumably used", like a forgotten technology, this is very fantastic and intriguing, it sounds to me like those rockets that reached the moon or The speakers that JBL produced in the seventies that could not be surpassed, and their knowledge has been lost and it is now impossible or very difficult to build them, it really seems to me like an oopart that comes from a parallel reality that was forgotten by an interdimensional traveler, or uses an esoteric and ancient science such as the myth of tartaria. Presumably it can be an intercom that uses static aether luminirefos as the great master maxwel taught us
The only thing I could think that would have been for testing would have been with telegraph was advancing to telephone and that might have been just Make sure that the current was traveling far enough to function
I was thinking this was a way to test the line when you mentioned what it was, but do you think it could have been used as a pocket listening device to bug a telegraph line with little to no fuss???
@@benjimenfranklin3668 No argument there, but 1) it was all in a 1960's theme, not steampunk, and 2) Batman and Adam West were not actually the same person. (Some would argue that Batman and Bruce Wayne were not actually the same person, but I digress.)
So, what you're getting at is, these were, if you had the transceiver model, kind of the world's first portable instant messaging app. Eat your heart out, AOL
Surely they would be dead before they could finish the heart and wipe the plate ?
There are pocket telegraph pieces much older than this piece.
Jesus, what a comment. You must be a millionare in terms of reddit karma.
As long as you were near the telegraph lines.
@@JackManic1984That’s right. This is as convenient as a payphone, at best.
Every tech item was high tech at one point in history.
The stone age never really ended in a lot of places. There are places in this world today where you can blow people's minds with things like a magnetic compass, lighter, steel butter knife, etc.
What an amazing piece of history you have! It can be said that I own an extensive collection of telegraph equipment and I can honestly say I’ve never seen one of these!
you said you have an extensive collection of telegraph related items, I'm looking for a spring to repair a 1905 Marconi spark gap the part I need is the tension spring, it's approximately a half inch diameter at the base and then tapers to meet the tension screw, probably a little over 3/8 to a half an inch high. Any idea where we might find something like this?
The original wire tap device for intercepting telegraph traffic during espionage or investigations.
100% that is for covert listening to the telegraph communications - which would justify its high price.
I mean secret stock trades, corporate financial info etc used to go down the lines unencrypted.
I don't think so, tbh. A clandestine device would allow you to tap the line and only skim a tiny bit of current. It would probably allow you to convert transmission wire into some kind of coil that drove a very small and lightweight deflector. This device requires you to sever the connection to one station or the other. You could possibly use this as part of a clandestine repeater/intercept station, but you would need some kind of keying device to transmit traffic further on.
@@bearnaff9387 it does not require that you cut that the connection. It will run with jumpers TO the wires
Imagine it with a dummy face and set of hands under the glass? If someone got stopped for suspicion, it might save them.
You need to contact a railroad telegraphy club. Telegraph keying and sounding has had a resurgence lately. Railroad telegraphy historians could tell you exactly the purpose and operation of your little sounder. I’m betting it was carried by conductors and could easily be plugged in the line on a station platform to monitor schedule times and adjustments. Most railway office and dispatch workers new code in the 1870s into the 1940s.
This is so beautifully designed. They really had a good eye back then
The screws are the same as the screws on a full size sounder where the gap and the spring are used to get a good sound at whatever voltage or current is supplied where you make the connection. Electromagnet field strength is determined only by current and number of turns, and telegraph systems are designed based on current. There were no voltage amplifiers until later.
It's not like they're independent. There is no current without voltage, and they **certainly** didn't have constant-current devices yet.
@@tsm688 Correct. In a many miles long single wire (Earth return telegraph) the voltage drops with distance due to the resistance of the wire, but in a circuit the current in equals current out and you have the same current everywhere and the signalling works at any place along the line.
It reminds me of a gadget from the old "Wild Wild West" TV show.
Yes it does! I could see James and Artemis connecting to Telegraph lines, sending messages so they could foil Dr Lovelace's evil genius plans to kidnap the President (yet again).
The telegraph on the train?
From a time when things worked a lifetime +
So fantastic ❤
No they didn't. The things that were made a long time ago that are still around today we're obviously well made, but there are countless things were made a long time ago that are no longer around.
All the disposable stuff made today isn't going to last but there are many things built today that are made to last decades or even centuries.
Don't make the mistake of looking at an antique and concluding that we don't make things anymore that will last that long.
@@nagualdesign I find it interesting that many 'everyday objects' can be found ... I would expect specialty items to last, but something as simple as a hairbrush, or razor, is just amazing (I hardly think ours will hold up as well)
@@nagualdesign please come with some examples. I got a lot of old tools from my grandparents that still run and work.
So no your argument is not valid i my opinion.
So agree, its amazing to see things like this 😊
@@lauriivey7801 i do have a throat cutter / razor from around 1890. I do think that they made things to last for a lifetime until they figure out that they didn't sell enough...
@@jessen00001 I'll give you an analogy. 1000 people are each given a coin to toss. If you get heads you're eliminated. After 10 rounds chances are that only 1 person remains, because that person just got tails 10 times in a row, but *they weren't any better than the other 999 people at tossing a coin.*
I guess your grandfather bought decent tools, he looked after them, and he was fortunate. I'm absolutely certain that there were many tools manufactured at the same time, some of them identical to your grandfather's, that did not stand the test of time. And if you bought some decent tools today and looked after they may well last just as long. Some things are built to last, other things aren't.
The important thing with a telegraph armature is current, not voltage. It takes voltage to generate current of course, but without some resistance you can burn out a coil if you're not careful.
Basically a lineman's test set
your right but they are home made from call button from homes ,
What a neat piece of history.
Those are the hands of a working man
A well fed working man 😊
You could make a nice wood base so it looks like how you would display a watch, but hide the bluetooth in the base with a couple of pins sticking up, no need to modify the item at all
And at that voltage, a lipo battery should work fine ;)
Use watch oil for lubrication.
Thank you for posting! This piece of history is fascinating,
very cool video brother, makes a fella nostalgic for a world when technology was more exciting
Very interesting little device. I think its a neat idea if these thinfs where popular in a pre phone world. plug your pocket telegraph into a landline and send messages to someone.
Awesome portable antique tech!
My great grandfather had one. The way it worked ( the way he said) is that they would find major telegraph lines and wire tgem through the watch and camp there for a few days. The changes in the telegraph line would do as the video showed. In his deployment he used one to transcribe 27 messages from Morse code. A problem they had though is that they would damage easily from over usage.
Try some sewing machine oil on it. It's great for little mechanisms.
Especially since whale oil is so hard to find these days.
@@yepiratesworkshop7997legally, sure.
Oil and electronics do not go together, Ever!. Regardless of the type of oil. (Just saying not trying to "correct you" or play gotcha)
Some of these units also have built-in Telegraph keys, or contactors. That would work by pushing down on the adjustment knobs. The connections were made, with a slot that was cut into the bottom of the case. You could slip a bare wire inside of with one connection, the other one was made through a very small phenolic or porcelain insulator with a sleeve that you could put a wire into. Usually there was a set of wires with jumper clips would be carried in your pocket along with it. These were normally carried by signal and test man. Working on Telegraph circuits. As a faster method of pulling out your actual test set that had a line meter a battery, and usually a couple different Sounders to change the line current
I hope the press doesn't get hold of it!
What with all the phone hacking.
I don't want people listening in on my morse code porn!
phwoar - look at the dots on that! ... --.--..----..--.... - ;-)
🥵
This is insane. Pocket morse telegraph... Genius developer device.
It would be useful for anyone repairing telegraph lines, and possibly for someone working on a railroad track if there was a telegraph line running with it.
Super cool device. Never seen one before but I don’t know much about the telegraph equipment.
That's a lovely thing. I've never seen one before.
That is really cool, thank you for sharing!!! I really enjoy Morse Code, and really like learning about different products.
What a beautiful piece, thanks for sharing
Well I definitely see it used as a spy gadget I don't think that would be the primary case but I'm sure for the right individual it was useful. It's much more on par with pricing of what a current day fluke would be. There are network testers that are $1500+ that do everything. Then there's some cheaper ones in the $800 to $1000 range that don't do quite as much. And then there's some cheap $10 network testers that almost barely tell you that it's working. I would imagine this is something a technician would carry and it would be small and lightweight. and it may or may not have been owned by the corporation they were working for.
Awsome litle machine. I was thinking, the noise it does when diferent currents, pass throthg it, could not that be used to recieve morse code too ? This could be like a proto pager and later walkie talkie, because, its portable, and you could recieve messages with it. It would be cool to know more about it. Thank you for sharing :D
Well yes. Morse code. Telegraph signals of that day I believe were all Morse code.
@@RVSparky That is very interesting, i didnt know such devices existed in such small size
Too cool. It's a portable surveillance gizmo. Wiretapping device in your pocket.
I was briefly confused and wondered why NurdRage had another channel.
Is that a good thing? Ill have to look up that channel.
@@RVSparky Chemistry. Same voice. Same setup on-camera with a close backdrop and a sheet of paper with a logo. Just an funny coincidence!
@@RVSparkyits a good thing
Awesome, thanks for the video, I love obscure tech!
Ah at first i thought this would have been a miniature spark gap RF transmitter.
looks like something you'd take to antique's roadshow
Seems to be kind of a 19th century "butt set".
Cool! Similar to the gadget taped to the blackjack cheater in the movie “Casino”, but not as crude
Age is just a number, everyone can be baffled and amused for hours guessing what antique gadgets do? 🤔😂
That’s a very unique and very cool item, thank you for sharing with us
Amazing telegraph pocket watcher
Obviously, man that uses his hands for good ! As a licensed Amateur radio operator, I saw one of these in a collection.
My bet is that it is a clandestine listening device to intercept telegraphic traffic.
Antique cellular telegraphy. Awesomeness.
I bet James West had one!
You could make a little stand for it that has electronics in it to occasionally send out a message.
Gorgeous little device. What a great find.
Nice find … such a thing must have been Fantastic to any boy that caught sight of it. Totally Science Fiction … for its day.
I always wanted kermit the frog to ta explain antique watches.
This is definitely going on the sleep playlist
Well Id be honored! Ha ha.
Basically the ancestor of the I-phone.
Interesting find. At first I thought it was some sort of spy equipment. Although there probably wasn't that much spying going on during the Victorian era.
I am in that FB Group. This is pretty neat. I'll have to look at the group page.
This looks pretty neat, i'll google sounding for more sounder content
Oh good heavens
Very cool relic, thanks for sharing.
❤ 4v is what my 50s gear uses ❤
thought it was an old tattoo relay 😂
A cool little gadget.
Dude, this is cool. I thought it was a pocket watch for a blind person, sounds ever 30mins or so. But what it actually is, is kinda cooler.
That’s really really cool!
Maybe for display, you ought to turn the coils around if you can? Maybe turn the whole mechanism? As the coils are obviously bleached on the glass side. Or maybe just use a green marker and freshen up the green? You can get very high end water color markers (not the acrylic ones) that was the standard for drawing ads with back in the day, and they come in all sorts of colors. Maybe try to colormatch? Make sure you don't get a paint marker. The thread around the magnet wire will soak up the color with just normal water based ones. That slightly pale bluish green is really nice with the silver!
Wow that's a great find , never saw or heard of them
Wow, I had NO IDEA!!! AMAZING!
Looks very interesting
3:30 it jamming because they used to oil springs, likely the oil has coagulated. But it also might have some form of insulation between the two shafts that’s rotted
Wow. What a cool find!
When I saw this thumbnail I thought maybe you pressed the top down to make a charge. Or generate one. so depressing it does not make a voltage out the bottom? you are applying voltage to make the coil contract...if not something as simple as a piezo crystal might work. I cant help but think this may be a spy thing as well.
A pager from the late 1800's, that's nuts lol
I'd love to find one of these. I'd wear it as a pocketwatch.
In that way you will to have overloaded pockets with weird clocks, spark strikers, bullet casting molds and other stuff
very awesome never seen one either thanks for shareing
super cool! thanks for sharing!
i know well and true i have no need for such a device.... but damn it i still kinda want one, thanks for sharing!
Seems like it could be used to eavesdrop when connected in parallel to the comms circuit........
That is so cool bro
Having something like that in your pocket, and you were in the wrong place, could probably get you hanged in WW1...
Morse code key fob
Isn't telegraph wire operated @ 1.8 - 3.3 V? Isn't 4 V still too high?
I can imagine these would have been used by Texas Rangers, Marshalls, Railway Men, and others for more than testing. To send messages on the line so that people in the local telegraph office wouldn't know a message was being sent or received.
that's really cool.
wow...interesting device, with a lot of style, thanks for showing it, it's strange that you are referring to something "presumably used", like a forgotten technology, this is very fantastic and intriguing, it sounds to me like those rockets that reached the moon or The speakers that JBL produced in the seventies that could not be surpassed, and their knowledge has been lost and it is now impossible or very difficult to build them, it really seems to me like an oopart that comes from a parallel reality that was forgotten by an interdimensional traveler, or uses an esoteric and ancient science such as the myth of tartaria. Presumably it can be an intercom that uses static aether luminirefos as the great master maxwel taught us
You could make a docking station that looks like just a socket since the connectors are at the bottom. Would not need any modification of the device.
Interesting piece.
Thanks
Pretty sweet!
Wow how cool
Interesting video...👍
Wow! it is antique! like telegraphic sound device but question is that how they decode ??? interesting.
Thank you.
Beautiful !
19th century smartwatch
Maybe a Bluetooth enabled stand.
Thanks so much for sharing this!!! So cool!!!!
Aye, nice find . Thanks for sharing.
Now THAT is COOL!
The only thing I could think that would have been for testing would have been with telegraph was advancing to telephone and that might have been just Make sure that the current was traveling far enough to function
Awesome piece 👌
I wonder if the basis of a relay, was from the electro- mechanics of a telegraph sounder?
Awesome 😊...the mroto startac of the 1900s
I was thinking this was a way to test the line when you mentioned what it was, but do you think it could have been used as a pocket listening device to bug a telegraph line with little to no fuss???
Nerdrage?
Probably old style pin jacks.
What people do not understand is Morse code is universal and doesn’t have a expiration date
Looks like something Adam West would have 😊.
Adam West? How so?
(Do you perhaps mean James West?)
@@VidkunQL
You know Batman had some crazy stuff.
@@benjimenfranklin3668 No argument there, but 1) it was all in a 1960's theme, not steampunk, and 2) Batman and Adam West were not actually the same person.
(Some would argue that Batman and Bruce Wayne were not actually the same person, but I digress.)
@@VidkunQL
Details ,details ,details.
Very cool 👍
Neat!