“Collection Insights” focuses on artifacts in the AWA Collection to learn about:
- Their history and significance – their provenance
- The stories behind the artifact
- How they work
- What problem did they solve
As the Museum staff has time, they will be publishing a series of “Google Docs” with interesting information regarding the AWA Museum’s many artifacts.
Happening at the Museum – Teletypes
The following is extracted from the February 2026 AWA monthly e-mailed newsletter.
On Tuesdays you’ll find the staff members hard at work (or goofing off) on something interesting. The other day, I stopped to talk with Duncan Brown to see what he was doing. Duncan explained that he was working on a piece of equipment that would receive teleprinter (what most people call Teletype, TTY, Radioteletype or RTTY) messages that would result in printed/punched paper tape, often to be forwarded to a specific destination.
The teleprinting, Teletype, and Radioteletype provided an incredible improvement over simple Morse Code or voice communications in the early and mid 1900s. Messages and data were sent from a station and the printed/punched tape served as a memory until the message/data could be sent on to the next station or the final destination. Note that the link between stations was wired then eventually radio was employed along with wired circuits. It could be said that this is very much like today’s internet. Messages/data or packets of digits are sent out into a network with specific destinations.
Some pictures follow that are just a small part of a much larger and fascinating story.
Duncan Brown’s explanation for the picture to the left:
This unit is the last known AN/TGC-1A, a Teletypewriter Torn-Tape Relay Set. It was the first “Store-and-Forward” relay or repeater. It was designed in 1943 and went into production in 1944 to help solve the military’s greatly increased teletypewriter traffic during WWII. Before this equipment was available, all teletypewriter message relaying (like with the telegraph) was done by hand.
An operator would receive a printed copy of an incoming message from one circuit, and hen would have to hand type the message onto another circuit. With the AN/TGC-1, an incoming message would be received and stored on a perforated tape. An operator would tear off the tape from the reperforator, read the address and take it to another AN/TGC-1 tape reader on another circuit to send it on its way. Thus “Torn-Tape Relay”. The perforated tape was the first digital storage media and you could see the individual bits.
Here is a room full of Teletypewriter Torn-Tape Relay sets. Messages/data would come in from a station and were printed/punched. The operator would tear it off (hence the “torn-tape” name), read the destination then take to the proper relay set for sending on to the next station or final destination. This could be seen as a physical representation of what goes on inside a router. No doubt the router handles much greater volumes at greater speeds.
The AWA is fortunate to have a wonderful collection and display of teleprinters, Teleype and Radioteletype equipment on display in the Museum. This helps tell the story, to some extent, of what came before the internet.