A Ragtime History of The Room

The first Australian Morse Code link was established in 1854 between Melbourne and Sandridge.

The original Sydney Telegraph Office was established on December 30, 1857 in the Sydney Exchange—later to be called the Royal Exchange—at the corner of Bridge and Pitt Streets, Sydney.

Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide were linked by telegraph lines in 1858, while the Sydney–Brisbane connection was made three years later.

Submarine cable was laid to connect Tasmania and Victoria in 1859.

For the first four years the Sydney Telegraph Department was controlled by the Commissioner of Railways. In 1861 the responsibility was transferred to the Minister of Public Works.

Wit the amalgamation of the Post and Telegraph Offices from 1870, and the introduction of the "Overland Telegraph which traversed the 3,000 kilometres between Adelaide and Darwin in 1872, the importance of the telegraph system increased dramatically.

Between 1860 and 1874 the Sydney Telegraph Office moved four times until the Operating Room was finally located on the Fourth Floor of the Sydney GPO in Martin Place in September of that year. In 1893 public telegraph enquiries moved from the fourth floor to the ground floor of the GPO before being relocated to Hooker House in King Street.

In 1928 another building was erected adjacent to the GPO with the Chief Telegraph Office (CTO) now occupying two floors. A phonogram section was added with, initially, forty telephonists. The same year saw the introduction of the Murray Multiplex system for interstate traffic.

Two years later teleprinters and teletypes were introduced to handle traffic at major post offices but morse was retained for lower-volume locations.

In the period leading to the early 1950s staffing levels within the CTO exceeded 1,000, providing a round-the-clock, seven-days-a-week service.

Teleprinter exchanges (the words were contracted to form TELEX) were introduced in 1954. These provided manual telex connections. It was to be another twelve years before automatic dialing was introduced to the telex network.

Beginning in 1959 morse code was gradually phased out with the introduction of TRESS (Teleprinter REperforator Switching System) which provided a store-and-forward function. While TRESS functioned very satisfactorily for 26 years it did, of course, remove the personal contact and involvement that were part of day-to-day morse and teleprinter communication.

A Farewell to Morse  was held in the Sydney Town Hall on Saturday, February 2, 1963. It coincided with the transmission of the last official morse message in Australia from Halls Creek (Western Australia) to Sydney.

In 1970 a facility was provided to permit members of the public to attend the CTO and have a telegraphist send telex messages for them.

Commencing in Perth, in May 1986 TRESS was replaced with a computer-based system that interfaced with the Telex network. The Sydney Message Bureau, located in Aussat House, Carrington Street, Sydney, commenced in October that year and became fully operational by May 1987.

The CTO had now been abandoned and an official "wake" was conducted there on May 15, 1987 to commemorate 113 consecutive years of service.

The year 2006 celebrated the 50th anniversary of the last morse-trained telegraphists.

Congratulations are extended to Ray Carter, Les Edwards and Brian Mullins. On Saturday, August 27, 2005, at Channeo 7 Television Studios, they successfully engaged in a transmission speed test of morse versus mobile text messaging and won a "Gold Medal". They also won a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

Congratulations also to Brian Mullins, manager of the Telstra Museum, on being award a deserved Order of Australia Medal in the 2007 Queen's Birthday Honours.

An apology.
Originally the list of nicknames, referred to above, was published in this space. Many of the names were unfamiliar to me but the list covered many people who worked in the Chief Telegraph Office over a period of many years. It's possible that some of those listed names caused embarrassment or distress to the people concerned. I was told yesterday that one man had complained about an incorrect listing of his nickname and, realising the implications of the name listed, I fully understand that. To that man I apologise unreservedly. I would not willingly have offended you. If other people have also been offended I offer them my apology as well. To avoid further embarrassment I have deleted the list of names completely.

Many entertaining stories came out of the Telegraph Room and I have avoided telling them here because they could only offend their central characters. That's not what this section of my web page is about—it's intended solely to help keep alive, for just a little longer, the romance of Morse and, the extraordinary characters who used it to maintain the communications of a nation.

                  —David Evans, Webmaster