Ancient Telegraph Code
jeffreyh at HAWAII.EDU
Thu Apr 13 23:53:27 EDT 2000
On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Chris Trask wrote:
> I picked up a very odd book over the weekend entitled "ABC
> Universal Commercial Electric Telegraphic Code", published by the American
> Code Publishing Co. in 1899. It appears to be a manual for a form of
> telegraphic shorthand used by merchants and shipping agents, similar to
> the Q-codes and numerical codes we still use. There are over 25,000 codes
> in this book, and they were able to use either a number or a word. They
> also had to add additional information if there's a "fill in the blank"
The 6th edition (1920) is 1400 pages thick, and contains 89,900
numeric codes for common words and phrases. Such a code book
helped to encode common expressions used on the landline telegraph
wires. The person wanting to send a telegram might be charged by the
word, when in fact, a group of words could be encoded into a single
numeric expression and sent in a faster manner, thus freeing up the line
for other messages to be sent. Such a code book also helped to bridge
Library call number: HE 7673.C58 1920.
73 <---a numeric code for "best regards"
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