Dots & Dashes

Antique Telegraph Keys and Brass Pounders

Search every volume:

?

How to search

sten gun
pages with both words
"sten gun"
the words together, as a phrase
sten OR sterling
either one (| works too)
sten -replica
leave out pages that mention “replica”

Without quotes, the last word also matches longer words that start with it (sten finds Stenophylla), and close word forms count (rifle finds rifles). Tick Exact words to match whole words only.

Other words for the same thing are searched too (uniselector also finds stepping switch), ranked below pages with your own words; the results say what else was searched. Quotes or Exact words turn that off.

Whole deep dives are listed first, then the pages inside them. Click a topic under the box to narrow the results.

Tick Photos to search the captions of every photo and diagram; each picture opens where it sits in its volume. The Show row narrows to one kind of result: volumes, deep dives, photos, parts lists, Library documents or downloads.

    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 Antique Telegraph Keys & Brass-Pounders — Vol 1: The Keys of the Wire Before radio, the key lived on iron wire strung across a continent. The brass camelback, the steel-lever key that replaced it, and the closed loop that every one of them lived in — the ancestors of every ham key that followed.
    2. Vol 2 Antique Telegraph Keys & Brass-Pounders — Vol 2: The Brass Pounders The keys were only half of it. The other half was a profession of fast hands and faster ears — tramp telegraphers, women operators, railroad dispatchers, and a young Thomas Edison — who read lightning off a wire for a living.