CHAPTER 3

KRUM AND MORTON (MORKRUM)

Mark Morton, head of the Western Cold Storage Company in Chicago, and cold-storage engineer Charles L. Krum, the vice president of the firm, entered the telegraph field quite by accident. A young electrical engineer named Frank Pearne, in 1902, had some ideas for a printing telegraph machine and needed financial backing to carry on his experiments. One of his contacts happened to be Joy Morton, the founder of the Morton Salt Company. Joy Morton became interested enough to become Pearne’s backer, and prevailed upon brother Mark to set up a laboratory in the attic of the cold-storage plant for Pearne’s experiments.

It seems that after a year or so, Pearne lost interest in his invention and went into the teaching field. He proved to be a very successful professor at Armour Tech where he remained until his death.[3] But Pearne’s work was not in vain, for Charles L. Krum had become intensely interested and carried on the work with further inventions of his own. Indeed, he filed his first patent application on August 20, 1903, which proposed the use of a code comprising four signals: a positive pulse or a negative pulse of low voltage, and a positive or negative pulse of a higher voltage. Four additional patents were filed, the last in 1906.

C. L. Krum then set about building a machine which was demonstrated in 1906 and looked promising enough to form a company to further develop it. This company was made up of the Mortons (brothers Joy and Mark) and the Krums (Charles L. and his son Howard who had just finished college). The combination of their names, of course, resulted in “The Morkrum Company,” which was incorporated in the State of Maine on October 7, 1907. The charter stockholders were Joy Morton, who shouldered the greatest financial burden; Charles Krum; Joy Morton’s secretary, Daniel Peterkin (he later became an officer of the Morkrum Company); Mark Morton; and Sterling Morton (Joy’s son, of whom we shall be hearing more later on). The working capital of the new company amounted to $150,000.00.

Charles Krum’s son Howard, after graduation, joined with his father in the developmental work of this new company and, due to his studies in electrical engineering, was able to help his father considerably. His first love and intended career was music, but he put this aside in favor of his father’s telegraph printer. However, a tune on the piano which he always kept in the laboratory would help him solve many a difficult problem.

In 1908 the Krums developed and produced a working model of the four-unit-code, plus-minus, high-low-voltage system, which was applied to operate the mechanism of an Oliver typewriter. The system was then given an operative test on the wires of the Chicago and Alton Railroad, of which Joy Morton was a director.

As their research work progressed, Howard studied the various systems in current use and, with his father, decided to abandon the plus-minus, high-low-voltage system. They turned instead to a system using the five-unit permutation code as employed by Baudot in his multiplex telegraph in which synchronized terminal apparatus with periodic correction was the controlling feature.

Their first joint patent describes a plan for accomplishing synchronized reception with transmission using a system of five relays interconnected to operate in successive cascade form; thus, when the relays at both terminals are correctly timed for successive operation, they will transmit and receive the five pulse combinations of the Baudot code. For transmitting and receiving the code pulses, each of the five relays has an additional contact. To start the relay cascade operation, a start relay is added at both terminals and operated by a start pulse which precedes each code transmission. It seemed natural for the Krums to turn to a relay system at first, since, from his work with the three-unit-code, high-low-voltage system, C. L. Krum was experienced with the possibilities of relay operation.

The system of the relay chain in cascade operation was employed to operate a page printer using the mechanisms of the Blickensdoerfer typewriter which had a three-row typewheel. The Postal Telegraph Company became interested and bought a number of these printers in 1910. This was the first sale of Morkrum apparatus and provided enthusiasm for the Krums for further research, which led to the substitution of a governed-motor-driven brush distributor to replace the relay cascade system. For this new plan the motor at the receiving printer operated at a slightly higher speed and was held in continuously synchronous operation with the transmitter by the periodic transmission of a correcting pulse. The new code selecting and printer control system was also adapted to operate the mechanism of the Blickensdoerfer typewheel typewriter. The idea worked out better than the cascade relay system, and a number of printers using this method were constructed and named the “Morkrum Blue Code.” A few were put in service at the Postal Telegraph Company.

The Associated Press (AP) became interested in the Morkrum “Blue Code” printer system as a replacement for the low-speed Morse system which was being used to transmit news items to newspapers in many cities. Here, continuous transmission under control of a code-punched tape, as used in the Morse code system, was a requirement, so Messrs. Krum set to work and designed a keyboard-operated, five-unit, Baudot-code perforator and an automatic punched-tape-controlled transmitter. This apparatus was installed at the New York headquarters in 1915 and receiving printers were gradually installed throughout the Associated Press system. The following excerpt and picture (fig. 6) from Oliver Gramling’s book, _AP—The Story of News_,[4] describes the introduction of the system to the Associated Press:

The tide of news by telegraph had continued with the years. Facilities had been improved, the Morse clicked into virtually every town in the country, but the old method was the same. Day in and day out, sending operators took dispatches, translated them into the dash-dot of code, and the telegraph keys sent the signals on the circuits at a rate of twenty-five to thirty-five words a minute. In member newspaper offices along the line the Morse sounders clack-clacked busily and receiving operators translated the code symbols back into words, copying the stories in jerky spurts. The news of more than half a century had been handled that way.

For some time, however, Charles L. Krum, a Chicago cold-storage engineer, and his son Howard had been working to perfect an automatic machine which would send the printed word by wire at greater speed without the intermediary of code. They called their invention the Morkrum Telegraph Printer—coining the word Morkrum by combining the inventor’s name with the first syllable in the last name of Joy Morton, a Chicago businessman who financed them.

Several other automatic telegraphic devices were being promoted, but (Kent) Cooper and engineers in the Traffic Department decided Krum’s machine held the most promise for their purposes. Tests got under way. In the Associated Press headquarters, which had been moved seven blocks from the old Western Union building to 51 Chambers Street, a sending operator sat at a keyboard similar to that of an ordinary typewriter. As he struck the keys, copying the dispatches before him, the machine perforated a paper tape with a series of holes, each combination representing a letter. The tape fed into a box-like transmitter which transformed the tape perforations into electrical impulses and sent them along the wires into the receiving machines in newspaper offices. These impulses actuated telegraph relays and set the receiving Morkrum machines automatically reproducing the letters which the sending operators were typing miles away.

The tests demonstrated that the Morkrum could transmit news hour after hour at the rate of sixty words a minute and the copy was delivered clean and uniform. Thus began the slow extension of Morkrum transmission to the whole leased wire system, replacing the “brass pounding” Morse keys. It was a transition that required years and until it was completed both Morse and Morkrum worked side by side in many places.

An interesting story appeared recently in “The AP World,”[5] giving some recollections of AP’s first field maintenance man, Royal (Roy) Bailey, then aged 71 and living in retirement in California. He still remembers the AP’s first printing telegraph machines, the article says; in fact, he helped make them, for he was a mechanic in the Morkrum Company’s factory in Chicago. When the Morkrum Company shipped the first machines to AP headquarters, Bailey went along with the machines to install and maintain them, although he remained on the Morkrum Company’s payroll. He eventually installed AP printers all over New York City and Connecticut, in Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, and in Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. He recalls that Morse telegraphers “used to groan when they first saw him.” The early teleprinters were hard to keep synchronized, Bailey further recalls, and copy boys had to check the speed frequently by sighting the striped motor flywheel through a tuning fork. (Many of those copy boys, he says, including Mickey Burt and Henry Elling, became AP engineers.)

As the experimental and developmental work continued at the Morkrum plant, Howard Krum studied all types of start-stop systems and found that synchronous control was the basis of all systems. After experimenting with various ideas his thoughts turned to a plan to make the start of the receiving unit somewhat independent of the transmitting unit start, thus avoiding irregularities then present in transmitter start devices. This idea led to the construction of a permutation-code, start-stop system, using segmented commutators with rotating brush distributors at both transmitting and receiving units and a start magnet for each to control start-stop operation.

In this system the transmitter start magnet, when energized, releases the transmitting brush, which immediately contacts the first segment to transmit a start pulse to operate the receiver start magnet; the five-unit-code signal combination follows and both transmitting and receiving units are stopped. The apparatus was applied to control the selecting and printing mechanism of the Blickensdoerfer typewheel typewriter and named the “Morkrum Green Code.” This improved apparatus soon replaced the Blue Code printer at Associated Press and other installations (see figs. 7 and 7A).

In this connection the following additional comments of Mr. Bailey may be of interest:[6]

In 1919 I installed the New York-Washington circuit, with drops at Philadelphia and Baltimore. This was a new type of printer using what we called the Green Code. This was considered an improvement over the old Blue Code, which meant a rearrangement of the receiving mechanism, but still the machines made use of a typewheel....

Our biggest job of all came in 1923 when we changed over all the old Blue Code typewheel printers in the New York area to the new style L. C. Smith typebar printers using Green Code. (Morkrum bought L. C. Smith typewriters and added new machinery to them. Those printers became the famous Model 12.)

As we have seen, a number of inventors had patented ways and means to adopt the five-unit code for operating a telegraph printer system by the transmission of a start pulse to start both transmitting apparatus and the distant receiving apparatus at the same time, followed by transmission of a selected code and a stop pulse. To achieve successful operation, very close speed adjustment was required. At first, this was achieved by the use of governed motors and, later, when accurately timed, 60-cycle alternating current became available, the problem of synchronous operation of send and receive stations was solved by the use of synchronous motors.

Telegraph printer systems of this type were used by telegraph companies for city-to-city transmission of telegrams and by news-gathering and -distributing organizations to transmit the news from headquarters to newspapers in different cities. While start-stop systems of this type were used successfully on press circuits and on telegraph message station-to-station circuitry, trouble was experienced when a number of printer send-receive units were set up in an intercommunicating system. Here it was found that the receiver start was not always in time with the transmitter start, due to varying line circuit conditions and a variation in the start release mechanism at connected stations.

It seems odd that synchronous systems, where both transmitter and receiver were started at the same time (requiring both transmitter and receiver to maintain synchronism), held the field for so long a time, thus limiting telegraph transmission to one-way operation.

It evidently took a mind not bound or hampered by the standard and accepted way of operating synchronous systems to discard such old ideas and to set forth boldly on a new pattern which, in reality, differed but slightly from the then-established synchronous systems, and to sow the seed for starting further developments leading to the present telegraph typewriter, TWX, and TELEX intercommunicating systems. Such a man was Howard L. Krum, who, in further thinking on the subject, came upon the almost simple idea of having the transmitter start the receiver rather than having them both start at the same time. This arrangement required higher speed operation of the receiver and therefore the receiving code pulse positions were spread over a shorter area, which meant progressively decreasing the angular division of the receiving members. Then, to set the received start pulse in the most favorable position with relation to the following code signal reception, an orientation adjustment of the receiver start position was provided.

(Note: On June 20, 1961, Kleinschmidt wrote to Howard Krum—then in retirement in California—giving a short description of the Morkrum Company activities, including the wording of the above last two paragraphs, and asking him to write the Morkrum story. Howard Krum replied on July 3, 1961, indicating his approval and saying that he would be glad to put together some notes for Kleinschmidt. It was quite a shock, therefore, when a letter was received from Howard Krum’s son, Charles, in September of 1961, telling of his father’s sudden serious illness. Then, regretfully, it was not long afterwards that word was received of Howard Krum’s death on November 13, 1961.)

Howard Krum’s improved method for operating start-stop, permutation-code telegraph systems was first applied to the Morkrum Green Code apparatus to control the selecting and printing operations of the Blickensdoerfer typewheel typewriter.

At this time the Kleinschmidt company and other manufacturers were starting to produce permutation-code, start-stop telegraph printers using typebar printing like the more modern typewriters which began rapidly to replace the Blickensdoerfer, the Hammond, and the other typewheel printing typewriters. Observing this situation, the Morkrum Company started intensive development work to produce the No. 12 typebar page printer, using the typebars and operating mechanism of the L. C. Smith typewriter and platen of a Woodstock typewriter (fig. 8).

Further developments produced the Morkrum No. 11 tape printer which used the Baudot combiner method for selecting and printing characters under control of start-stop, send-receive devices. The No. 11 was a small, compact tape printer operating at fifty words per minute. Quite a number were put into service at hotels and elsewhere for local message service (fig. 9).

The new No. 12 typebar page printer found numerous applications. It replaced the Green Code and the earlier Blue Code wherever used. The new No. 12 was installed at Western Union, on some railroads, and in the Chicago Police telegraph system. The No. 12s were also installed by Postal Telegraph on intercity circuits and used as receiving units for the Postal Multiplex. The Postal Multiplex had been designed by Morkrum and Postal engineers with the consultant assistance of Donald Murray who was a friendly associate and had a license agreement with the Morkrum Company covering some of his patents. A few No. 12 Morkrums were shipped abroad for use with the Murray Multiplex; the British Post Office Telegraph and the Australian Telegraph Administration were customers.

Late in 1924 the Morkrum Company and the Kleinschmidt Electric Company joined to form the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Corporation. A story telling of the union of these two companies was published by _Fortune_ magazine in March of 1932.[7]

Before going to that story, it may be of interest to describe an important event concerning the change in the supply of electric power from direct current to 60-cycle alternating current and the final timing to exactly 60 cycles per second of all A.C. power supplies so that our electric clocks may be connected to an A.C. outlet and give correct time.

The advent of correctly timed, 60-cycle A.C. electric power, available throughout the nation, was a great boon to the designers of printing telegraph apparatus and some types of facsimile telegraph and picture transmitting systems. In prior years, overline synchronization of send and receive apparatus was always a problem and never perfect. Today, synchronizing apparatus between terminals becomes the simple matter of providing 60-cycle A.C. synchronous motors. Just plug into a power outlet and you have “sync”!

Henry Ellis Warren, a clock maker, noting the change in electric power service from direct current to 60-cycle alternating current, set about to build a motor to operate at 60-cycle speed but found that the 60-cycle frequency did not always hold to form, and when applied to running a clock, did not hold correct time.

The following excerpt, from _The Romance of Time_,[8] tells of Warren’s activities which led to synchronizing 60-cycle alternating current to exact time:

_Synchronous Electric Time_

One of the most important of all contributions to horology is the work of an American who has earned the title, “Father of Electric Time.”

Henry Ellis Warren was graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894. In 1907 he married and settled in Ashland, Massachusetts. Here it was that he began to work out his idea for electrically operated timepieces.

His first product was an ingenious battery-operated clock. In 1914 he organized the Warren Clock Company and set up production in a barn on his farm. Yet he knew the battery clock was not his goal, for direct current offered no means of accurate regulation. Direct current flows constantly in one direction only, like water down a river or like the passage of time. On the other hand, alternating current changes direction regularly, like the oscillation of the balance wheel in a watch. But instead of the usual five times a second of the balance wheel, most alternating current completes its trip forward and backward sixty times a second. Obviously, a clock “geared” to such a frequency would run as reliably as the current.

In 1916, after several years of extensive experimentation, Warren developed a motor which would start by itself, run on alternating current, and carry without difficulty the load of reduction gears driving the clock hands. It could also handle the cams and contacts of an alarm clock or set in motion a striking or chiming mechanism.

Then came the test. He plugged the clock into the power socket. It commenced to run. Weeks of observation and checking showed an irregular error of as much as ten to fifteen minutes a day.

Convinced that his clock was right, Warren discovered that the alternating current frequency delivered to his barn factory was off half a cycle per second—59½ and not 60 cycles. This slight deflection would produce that much time loss in a 24-hour run. When he informed the electric company of this error, he was met at first with polite disbelief. Yet he showed such a comprehensive knowledge of the subject that the company began to recheck their standards.

Warren built several more synchronous clocks and a master regulator of his own design for power-station use. On one dial of his master clock there were two hands, black and gold. The black hand was connected to an accurately adjusted pendulum clock, beating seconds. The gold hand was driven by the gear train of one of his electric clocks. As long as the two hands revolved together, the current cycles were exactly 60 per second. Set up in a power station, this allowed the operator to adjust the turbine generators as needed to keep the two hands of the master clock together. Thus all other properly set electric clocks on the same system would keep the same time automatically.

The Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Boston tried out the master clock on October 23, 1916. Since then this regulation has continued.

Other power companies adopted Warren’s master clock. Today virtually all alternating current furnished in America is similarly checked. Practical electric time is available at the light socket almost everywhere. But there are additional benefits.

Standardizing the frequency expanded the market for current to run the increasing number of clocks in use. Yet, from the consumer’s point of view, each clock draws little current, costing but a few pennies a month. Uniform frequency also gave more even speeds in motor-driven machinery, with a resultant improvement in product. It made easier the joining of one power station to another. Synchronous motors used in certain meters and recorders produced better, more accurate records at lower cost.

The Warren enterprise expanded rapidly. The battery clock was discontinued. The red barn was no longer large enough, and new space was acquired. The trade mark “Telechron,” meaning “time from a distance” (from two Greek words), was used to identify all products of the company. The firm name was changed to stress the name Telechron, and in 1952 a merger was made with the General Electric Company. Plants are now operated in Worcester as well as in Ashland, Massachusetts.

And now back to the telegraph field....