Teleprinter: automatic printing

About the sound

The electric teleprinter „Automatik Lo 133“ of the company Lorenz is a telegraphy device and was used by the police of the city of Essen (Germany) in the 1960s-1970s. It was used to transmit and receive written messages (for example arrest warrants) by means of electric signals. Today the device is an exhibit of the historic collection of the NRW police.
The text is typed with a typewriter keyboard and – just like a usual typewriter – printed onto paper with types. In addition the press of a key translates the telegraphed letters into electric signals through an encoding mechasnism, which are sent to the receiver. At the receiver’s side the electric signals control a printing mechanism (with local electric energy), which prints the text onto paper - also with an encoding device.
The teleprinter works with the „start-stop-system“. The combination of these steps for every sign is determined in the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2. Every sign is preceded by a start-step (no electricity) and the end of the sign is a stop-step (electricity).
Further components of the teleprinter are a punched tape reader and a tape puncher. They are for applying prepared texts onto the punched tape, which can then be transmitted swiftly. The punched tape is read by the machine and the text is automatically printed on paper resp. sent to the addressees. This punched tape can be made by the teleprinter itself. The incoming messages can also be punched onto the tape, enabling them to be sent out later. Here the typical sounds of the teleprinter are made by automatic printing of the types onto paper with a high speed, when the message is transferred from punched tape onto paper as a text.

Sound Recordist: Konrad Gutkowski
Photograper: Konrad Gutkowski
Video recordist: Konrad Gutkowski