In a message dated 7/20/2009 1:52:46 PM Central Daylight Time, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com writes:
Last weekend the television was full of news and historical looks at
> Walter Cronkite, who passed away Friday. (RIP, Walter)
>
> Did you notice some of the unusual, or at least infrequently seen,
> Bell System equipment? I saw what looked to me like several
> Receive-Only Model 19 Teletype machines!
Thewe were not "infrequtnly seen" in nespapers, radio and TV newrooms and wire service offices. I believe we havd 14 Teletypes in the United Pres bureau in Dallas, not counting a couple of machines for TWX and a WUX printer from Western Union. I forget how many there were in the newsroom when I worked for The Daily Oklahoman and the Oklahoma City Times, but it was a bunch, both for Associated Press and United P{ress. Radio stations and most TV newsrooms got their news the same way--from receive only Teletypes receivng the news reports put out by the wire services' bureaus such as the one I worked in in Dallas. Each service had a number of different wires, general news, sports, radio, local or other state news, financial reports. The Teletypes became almost univeral after their development made them sufficiently reliable. Before that More operators with keys and souders sent and received the report, but with Teletypes there was no operator needed at the receive end. The Teletypes were connected to the same leased telegraph circuits that the Morse operators had used. These were provided mostly by telecos, although a few ran on W.U. circuits originally. Each circuit was operated either with customer-owned equipment or Bell equipment, all one owneership on one circuit. Of couse if you had a patch board you could patch one of either ownership to any wire in case of a failure. Our patchboard in Dallas also had an unmarked TWX jack, so we could patch an ASR machine in to avoid slow and tiresome hand punching.
And one clip, played repeatedly, featured the familiar sound of a
> Teletype clunking out the latest hot news with Walter announcing
> over the top of that sound. I also noticed one scene with a 564
> Keyset along with the equivalent 300-type keyset as well as a
> 500-type set with no dial but with a "beehive" lamp holder mounted
> on the dial blank cover plate! Other scenes revealed lots of beige
> telephones, a 10 button keyset or two and lots of rotary dial
> equipment. I was surprised that more headsets weren't seen - I'm
> sure lots of them were used by those who may have had to write or
> type as they received news from distant correspondents. Many manual
> typewriters were evident, of course!
The Teletype background noise was used on many radio and TV news shows. I don't remember headsets being used very much...most people propped their phone on their shoulder while they were taking dictation. Many times you were getting information rather than dictation and had to write the story from your notes. In some cases a dispatcher phone arrangement with the transmitter on a pantagraph mounting was used, sometimes with a single hearset (no transmitter) was used, sometimes hung on the hookswitch when not in use.
None of the discussion associated with these scenes focused on the
> telephones, of course. Maybe someone reading this can help us
> better understand how this equipment played into the development of
> the Evening News? I'm sure telephones, Teletypes and the Bell
> System played a major part in conveying the day's happenings to
> America.
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> The machines you saw were Teletype Model 15RO devices. They were the
> standard of the Associated Press and United Press International well
> into the 1970's: the sounds you heard were of an actual Teletype
> machine. Small radio stations, such as WMLO in Beverly,
> Massachusetts, where I worked in 1976, still used them: to this day,
> newscasters refer to "Rip-'N-Read" as a derogatory term for any
> quickly or carelessly produced news broadcast. The term comes from
> the wire services' hourly printout of a news summary, which DJ's
> could rip from the Teletype machine and read directly on the air. >
> As to the telephones shown on Cronkite's set and offices, they were
> actually instruments, and actually in use: Cronkite had been a war
> correspondent and a press reporter, so he was an old hand at making
> effective use of telephones (or radiotelephones, when he was in
> Europe). Of course, they could have been hidden out of sight, but
> the networks found that the public liked to have an image of an
> informal setting where actual work could be done, because it made
> viewers feel they were receiving more recent reports instead of a > staged presentation.
>
> By the 1980's most TV stations had revised their sets to show glitzy
> video graphics and monitors: public tastes had changed so that
> viewers were more attracted to stations which portrayed new
> technology.
>
> Bill Horne
I could cynically suggest the it was not public taste but the stations' search for ratings that let to the graphics and glitz. I still remember fondly the weatherman with a chalk or crayon board and a stick, often making the weather more clear then they do now with their electronic gadgets.
-- Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com
***** Moderator's Note *****
On the first day of my honeymoon in 1987, I awoke in an English cottage which had a TV set that looked like it had been assembled by Philo T. Farnsworth himself.
I turned it on - it was a Monday morning at about 9 AM - and I watched as a mechanical engineer explained the method used for stress testing industrial bolts. He was very pleased that the bolts he was testing hadn't broken until stressed at 150 percent of their rated strengh.
To this day, the memory delights me: I hope the British have retained what was, to me, an obvious sense of television's limits and how it should most appropriately be used.