In a message dated 7/20/2009 1:52:46 PM Central Daylight Time, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com writes:
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.
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.
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.