My Sisters Telegraphic: Women in the Telegraph Office ... - Monoskop

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DAILY LIFE IN THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE
Figure 7. Standard Morse key. From Pope, Modern Practice of the Electric Telegraph.
required to make and break the circuit. There were several different styles
of Morse telegraph keys; a “camelback key” had a characteristic “hump” in
the lever, while most keys had a straight lever. 8
Around 1900, the Vibroplex or “bug” automatic sending key became
the instrument of choice for low-strain, high-speed sending. The bug’s
lever moved sideways, rather than up and down, as did the original telegraph
key. Weighted contacts attached to either side of the lever caused the
key automatically to produce a series of dots if the lever was moved in one
direction and a series of dashes if moved in the other. This reduced the
strain on an operator’s arm when performing fast sending and prevented
“glass arm,” a temporary paralysis caused by long periods of high-speed
transmission. The bug came into common use around 1900; the Vibroplex
version was patented in 1904. Many operators owned their own bug, which
Figure 8. The Vibroplex or “bug,”
manufactured by Horace G. Martin. From
Telegraph Age, February 1, 1913, 93.