Caller of the Night: Maureen on her experience working with ticker tape

This week, caller Maureen spoke to Roman about her experience working with ticker tape - the earliest electrical financial communication system. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to a podcast from News talks'b follow this
and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome to you, Maureen.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Yes, good evening. I wanted to talk about when I
was sixteen and I did a course to be a
teleprinter operator at the Auckland Post Office.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Well, yet, tell me about that.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Well, we did a four months course and then we
went to the big telegraph office where the over one
hundred people, a lot of the men were doing telegrams
with Morse code, and we were doing the teleprinters and
we had to read the tape and glue the the

(00:52):
other tape that came out with the message on onto
these telegram forms and they sent to the different places
that they were delivered by telegram boys.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
How exciting was that? An exciting job for you was?

Speaker 3 (01:08):
And the people were all friendly and we all there
were I think twenty five women there and in the
over one hundred people all doing Morse code teleprinters, different teleprinters.
They were Murray's and Creeds, and it was it was

(01:29):
a good job.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Murray and Creeds. Tell me about that.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
The Murray was a teleprinter and the Creed was a
more bigger thing. The Murray went slowly, like forty words
a minute, where the Creed was much faster printing out
the tapes of telegrams.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
So was it that machine that you're watching a movie
and you see it going like that?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, gotcha. Wow, I'm glad you understood that.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yes, it's a good description.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Well, thank you. Well, I was just trying to I
was trying to impersonate the things you see in the movies.
I love that they're sitting there and all of a
sudden it's it lights up, doesn't it. That's great? So
tell me that tape literally had a whole lot of
holes punched in it. How was that translated into what anything?

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yes, it was translated into what we sent, and if
there was a mistake, we could look back and read
the tape. The holes all meant in a B C
D all that?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Did it take a long time for you to learn
all of that? And just like you know, straight off
with that bang got it to day.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
It makes me think it must have been hard, but
it wasn't. We learned it quite quickly.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Ver nice And how long did you do that job
for mouring?

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Oh? I think about two years? And then I got married.
I married one of the men who had been a
started with telegram boy postman, and then he moved up
to Auckland and did the tellyprinter and Morse co. A
lot of the men did the Morse Code.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Would that be because they had that military background?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
No, No, he had nothing like that. He left school
at fifteen and did this course and he went on
later to the cable station which sent cables to oversea
different places where they sent them directly to London and
Canada in different places.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
It's quite incredible, you think, and various aspects of what
you're talking about have done their time in there and
things have moved on, but Morse code is still used.
There are still needs for some of the things that
you were trained or were working around, aren't there.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
I didn't learn the Morse code.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
No, that's right.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
We just the girls all had the teleprinters and we
read the tape that we'd sent or the printed one
came on another tape that you glued on the telegram form.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Wow, so all of that tape, You're talking hundreds of
meters of the stuff throughout a whole week. How long
was that kept for before you ditch it?

Speaker 3 (04:18):
How do you mean, oh no, look to tell the print. Yes,
they'd be rolled up and put away so that we
could look back for many mistakes. It is.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
What a great story, Maureen. I've really enjoyed that.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Oh good, thank you.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Thank you, thank you for calling. I love all of
that stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
For more from news talks that'd be listen live on
air or online. And keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on IR Radio.