The History of TTY Teletype Machines
Teletype, or TTY, machines are electronic machines that allow two people to send typed messages over telephone wires. Teletypes these days look and feel a lot like laptop computers, and are used primarily by deaf people for phone communication.
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Origins
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Inventors had been working since the late 1800s to create a printing telegraph machine. It wasn't until 1902, when young electrical engineer Frank Pearne thought he had a solution, that the project started picking up steam. Pearne solicited funds from Joy Morton, head of the Morton Salt conglomerate, to develop his idea. Though Pearne soon gave up, his experiments were continued by the Krum family, who patented two different telegraph printers by 1907.
Early Challenges
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Early teletype models were typewriters connected to telegraph lines--delicate, temperamental machines that broke easily. Their popularity grew slowly. America's first TTY manufacturer, the Morkrum Company, developed new models, increased its infrastructure and started offering attractive salaries to teletype operators. By 1914, the Associated Press adopted TTY as its preferred method of getting information to all its branch offices. Within a year, every newspaper in New York and Philadelphia had followed suit.
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Teletype Company
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The Teletype Company quickly arose as a competitor to Morkrum. While Morkrum focused on providing teleprinters to the United States Military, Teletype offered its machines to civilians and military alike. Teletype and Morkrum soon merged their operations. In 1935, Teletype introduced its most popular TTY machine, Model 15. This sturdy, durable cast-metal transmitter became crucial to U.S. military communications in World War II.
Switch to Telephone
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By the mid-1900s, teleprinters had fallen out of favor with the American public. Telephones were more affordable, quicker and easier to use than telegraphs. TTY machines were seen as bulky and inconvenient. It wasn't until 1964, when deaf physicist Robert Weitbrecht found a way to modify the teletype so that it could be used over telephone lines, that TTYs found new vitality and a new audience: the deaf.
Deaf Use of TTY
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A few additional innovations encouraged TTY use among the deaf. In addition to making the machines telephone-compatible, companies like AT&T found ways of making teletypes lightweight and easier to handle. Starting in 1968, the company retrofitted hundreds of old machines for personal use. In 1973, the world's first portable teletype premiered at the California Association of the Deaf convention in Sacramento. Later, the UltraTec company made communication even easier by creating machines that could handle both old, five-bit coding protocols as well as more complex ASCII characters.
Present Day
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Thought TTY machines are once again ebbing in popularity due to modern innovations such as text messages, personal computers and instant chat, teletypes remain important in the deaf community. The Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing estimates that there are over 200,000 TTY machines still in use around the country.
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References
- Photo Credit typewriter image by zelenyj from Fotolia.com
