Museum of Communication at Burntisland

Telegraphy

Telegraphy became vital for sea vogages and even railway line signalling.

Navy radio telegraph operators on shore type messages to seaborne ships. Radiotelegraphy transmitters send typed messages by radio waves to receiving stations located within broadcasting range of the transmitter. Early radio telegraphs transposed keystrokes into electrical pulses and the receiving telegraph translated these into letters.

The Railway Block Telegraph (c.1930) was installed in a signal box (see opposite). It used magnetically polarised pointers so that an electric current in one direction caused the pointer to move one way and a current in the other direction caused the opposite effect, showing "Line Blocked / Train on Line / Line Clear".

Grosser Kurfurst Morse Key (Gem from the collection!)

This is a special Morse key, unique in being the only surviving specimen from Kaiser Wilhelm II's Imperial High Seas Fleet. It was manufactured in 1912 and fitted to the powerful spark transmitter on the 25, 000 ton battleship Grosser Kurfurst, this key was in use throught the First World War.

In 1919, with the rest of the German High Seas Fleet, Grosser Kurfurst was interned in Scapa Flow. All Morse keys were removed to prevent inter-ship communication, but this one remained hidden aboard the battleship. Morale in the fleet was very low and 'Soldiers Councils' exixted on most ships as sources of agitation and potential mutiny. Living conditions and indicipline were worst on the big ships. Van der Vat (1986:200) describes Grosser Kurfurst as 'the most slovenly ship of them all'. It is possible that the Soldier's Council had hidden the Morse key, without the knowledge of German officers, for ship-to-ship communication in the event of a general mutiny. At around 1330 on 21st June 1919, Grosser Kurfurst struck the bottom of Scapa Flow. 51 other vessels sank the same afternoon.

The key was subsequently recovered in 1937, in a salvage operation conducted by Metal Industries Ltd, and presented to James Ferguson, a press photographer from the Daily Record and the first man to take photographs at these depths. Grosser Kurfurst was eventually raised on 26th September 1938, the day before the Queen Elizabeth was launched at Clydebank. The key was donated to Harry Matthews several years ago by James Ferguson's widow, after hearing Harry in a radio broadcast. James Ferguson was a radio amateur.

Mary J. MacDonald, 5 Oct 2005

[ Top | Previous Page | Next Page]