An Instrument from Old "DO" Telegraph Office, West Roanoke

[NW Mailing List]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, memories and collection on this topic, Abe. It is truly fascinating. 

I passed on some of what I’ve learned from you to peers where I work (I’m known for “teaching” obsolete or trivial, yet interesting information). “Glass arm” and telegrapher speed made the cut, to much acclaim!

I’ll widen my thanks to all with more life experience than I for sharing your memories and knowledge. Keep doing it!

Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio

Sent from my mobile

On Aug 1, 2025, at 2:21 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:


When I was about 12 years old, my father brought home this cute little local telegraph sounder for me.  It is from the old "DO" Telegraph Office at 16th Street, West Roanoke.

She is a Bunnell instrument and the base is marked WU and Sounder 1-A, and the underside of the wood base is marked New York Relay Shop 1929.  She is equipped with the 1893-style aluminum lever.  As built, she was a 50 Ohm instrument, but I rewound her coils to make her a 120 Ohm instrument.  (It just makes it easier for me to mix-and-match if all instruments in the collection have a uniform resistance... Everything will work off the same power supply, and I do not trust century-old enamel insulation on magnet wire or the troublesome, brittle  century-old lead-out wires from the coils.)  Because she has sentimental value to me, I did not refinish the wood base, paint the coil covers or re-finish the brass.  Except for the re-wound coils and some trunnion pivot lubrication, she is exactly as my father handed her to me, all those years ago.   

When I was a kid I  drove this little gal with a 6-volt railroad lantern battery... the understanding of current and resistance were far in the future.  Sure, the coils got hot, but 12 year old kids can't fathom why !

Right now she is singing on an operating telegraph circuit, clicking along at 35 words per minutes on my desk, pumping out an article from an 1894 magazine which gives details of the first telegraph office in Harrisburg a half-century earlier, in the year 1846.  That office was located on the second floor of the railroad depot of the Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mount Joy & Lancaster RR, which, despite its grandiose name, ran only from Harrisburg to Lancaster, 35 miles.  (In 1846, the railroad did not go west of Harrisburg.)

The wooden resonator in which the instrument is here pictured was custom built two years ago by a friend at church.  I showed him a photograph, he made a pencil sketch, and the following week he handed me my new resonator.  HA!

-- abram burnett
telegraphin'  turnips
.
 
<N&W Telegraph Sounder from DO West Roanoke _ edited cropped 7 in wide 300 ppi.jpg>
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