Sending Dots and Dashes

This machine is a Siemens Telegraph Register. It dates from around the 1850s, no later than 1860. The reason for this date is that this machine records the message onto a paper tape, storing a permanent record of the Morse code message. This was the earliest version of how the messages were received before Alfred […]

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A Tragic Paper Trail

In 1925 William and Jane Clouten of Tacoma added the final letter to this pile of correspondence they had been collecting. Creased where they had been folded for dispatch, the documents’ worn edges and dog-eared corners suggest they may have opened and read many times. Each document was a terrible reminder of the loss of […]

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