introduction

Telautography must play a marginal role in this account of elementary signs : pictures because it does not involve analysis of an image (or even letterform) into basic elements for coded transmission and reconstitution. These distinctions should become clear by an examination of the patents described below.

The telautograph is a system by which messages written in longhand at one station may be reproduced simultaneously at one or more other stations without material loss of any of the original characteristics... The transmitter consists of a stylus which is mechanically connected, through two sets of levers and appropriate swivel joints, to the contact arms of two variable rheostats in such a way that the horizontal and vertical components of the stylus movement are translated into corresponding current variations in two lines connecting the receiver. At the receiver the variations in the line currents produce similar movements in two coils or "buckets" within a magnetic field. The movements of these coils are communicated through a system of levers to a writing pen which reproduces the movements of the sending stylus. The pen is lifted from the paper and the paper is shifted to provide fresh writing surface by magnets which are controlled by superposed alternating current supplied by a buzzer located in the transmitter... The speed of operation is determined entirely by the rapidity with which the operator can write.

Clokey, Allison A. "Telegraphy." in Pender, Harold and Knox McIlwain, eds. Electrical Engineers' Handbook : Electric Communication and Electronics (Wiley Handbook Series, 1936) : 11:01-35 (includes section on "telautograph system" as distinct from "facsimile transmission."

Clokey's schematic illustration shows the essentials of the telautograph systems described by Foster Ritchie (1899 GB 24,048) and George S Tiffany (1910 US 954,150), all based on Elisha Gray's patents, some of which are presented below. Yet Clokey's account

Yet as we shall see, several manifestations of the Gray system relied not on rheostats and current variations. Some of the patents incorporate a regular sequence — something like a "beat" — of polarized impulses that were less susceptible to induction and other line influences; moreover, the Gray system (and others) eventually would separate those signals from the power needed to actuate the mechanism, by means of relays. Each patent associated with Gray or with his companies represented some kind of improvement on its predecessors; the system did seem to stabilize in the 1920s, however.

Telautograph (and much later Electrowriter) devices were used for intraoffice communications. The Dead Media and Office Museum websites listed below refer to their use in hospitals and clinics, insurance firms, hotels (front desk to housekeeping), banks, train dispatching, and even as a link between brokerages and cable offices. Telautography was used by the Air Force for dissemination of weather reports ("weather symbols not available on keyboards", writes Guitry). In 1899, then-head of the British Museum Reading Room, Richard Garnett, proposed the introduction of the Telautograph for paging books. Devices would be furnished at the catalogue desks, and patrons would retain a slip of their request. …How vast the improvement in the economy of the Reading Room! Garnett wrote, No more troops of boy attendants, with the inevitable noise and bustle; nothing but the invisible messenger speeding on his silent errand, and the quiet delivery of books at the desks: an un-paralleled scene of perfect physical repose in the midst of intense mental activity. Of course the improvement would not stop with the Reading Room, and ere long all departments would be connected by the writing telegraph. (Richard Garnett, Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography (London: George Allen, 1899) : 257; a transcription can also be found at here.

other references

Dead Media Project, working notes 05.5 (derived from Lewis Coe, The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and its Predecessors in the United States (1993); notes that telautograph systems — specifically Foster Ritchie's 1900 design — were short-range instruments, not dependable over five miles. This shortcoming probably owed to their reliance on "current strength" over lines without repeaters; telegraph signals were more robust in this regard.)

Dead Media Project, working notes 44.7 (discussion of later days of telautograph, 1960s-80s, when it went under the name Electrowriter)

Elisha Gray (Marius Rensen, fax history)

antique communications equipment (Early Office Museum, good on Gray Telautograph system)

"The Telautograph." Manufacturer and Builder 25:4 (April 1893) : 76-77 (link to pageviews at Cornell University, Making of America)
 

(enormous document, 10 sheets of drawings, 28 pages of specification and claims)

In my present system these pulsations do not preferably directly operate the motors which move the receiving-pen as do the pulsations sent to line in the system of my prior patents. I now propose, preferably, to produce a constant strain upon the apparatus which drives the receiving-pen, this strain originating in a motor, revolving shaft, weight, or other device or force independent, as regards its source of power, of the transmitting instrument, and to govern the application of this force to the driving of the receiving-pen by means of an escapement operated by the pulsations above referred to. Thus each pulsation sent over the line will permit the receiving-pen to advance a space corresponding to one-half a tooth of the escapement-wheel, and as each pulstation represents a certain definite space traversed by the transmitting-pen and each tooth of the governing escapement-wheel of the receiver represents a certain definite space over which the receiving-pen is driven the movements of the transmitting-pen will be reproduced with almost absolute accuracy by the receiving-pen. (1:50ff)
 

This would seem to be the "much simplified and improved" form of the invention described in The Manufacturer and Builder (April 1893) :

The mechanism by which the movements of the pencil are duplicated is comparatively simple and positive in character, being controlled by a series of impulses sent over the line, constituting what is known among electricians as the "step-by-step" system of operation. We will endeavor to give a simple explanation of the devices employed. ¶ The pencil used at the transmitter has near its point a collar, with two small eyes in its rim. To each of these eyes is attached a fine silken cord, running off in two directions at right angles. Each of these cords passes around a small drum supported on a vertical shaft. Beneath the drum, and attached to the same shaft, is a toothed wheel, so arranged that when either section of the cord winds upon or off of its drum, a number of teeth will pass a given point corresponding to the length of cord so wound or unwound. Thus, if the pencil in its movement winds up one inch of one of the cords, forty of the teeth of the wheel will pass by a given point. Each one of these teeth stands for a single electrical impulse sent over the line, as will later be seen. ¶ The mechanism of the receiving instrument is practically the duplicate of that of the transmitter, but, as previously noted, its motions are purely automatic, being controlled by the electric impulses sent over the line from the transmitter. The receiver is provided with two escapements, which are actuated by polarized relays, and so constructed that each electrical impulse received from the line permits the escapement wheel to feed one step either forward or backward. These escapement wheels are mounted on vertical shafts, which carry drums of the same size as those of the transmitter. The forward or backward movements of the escapement wheels, therefore, are imparted to the drums. To these drums are attached, by means of cords, pen arms of aluminum, which are hinged together at the point where the pen is carried. The writing is done with the point of a small capillary glass tube, to which the ink is fed through one of the aluminum tubes, which is kept supplied from a small reservoir. The point of the glass tube rests upon tbe paper, and when moved over it by the motion of the hinged arms to which it is attached, the ink is caused to flow from it; when it is raised from the paper the ink is retained in the tube by capillarity. ¶ It is not difficult now to understand how the duplication of the writing at the receiving end of the line is effected. When a movement in one direction of one of the toothed wheels of the transmitter is made by the writer, a certain number of electric impulses, according to the length of the line, is sent over the line, and the escapement wheel at the receiver will be given a movement forward or backward, as the case may be, the same distance, carrying the drum around in the direction corresponding to that given by the writer's pencil to the drum at the transmitter.

One finds two means of generating signals from the transmission to the receiving station: one is a sequence of polarized signals, that keep the system moving along its current trajectory until an additional signal — of one polarity or the other — starts it on a different trajectory. The second system uses rheostats that vary the strength of a constant current. The second system is described in this patent. A writing pen attached by pantograph to rheostats that generate current variations that, in a receiving station, actuate magnets that control via a similar pantograph arrangement a writing implement. The system is suited to handwriting and other forms of line art, but not to photographs or the transmission of tonal values beyond black-and-white line art.

The patent specification starts by describing the shortcomings of previous systems of its class. Those failings include these :

1. The transmitting pen moved only enough to produce a single character;
2. in order to print a word, the paper itself must be caused to be moved under the receiving pen, upon which the writing must be written neither too rapidly nor slowly;
3. the writer must thus "distort his characters" so that at the receiving end they take their proper form;
4. there was no provision for line break;
5. it was impossible "to dot an i or cross a t or underscore or erase a word"; and for these reasons,
6. telegraphs of this class "could not be used successfully for transmiting any matter such as pictures, drawings, mpas or diagrams, or such characters as Hebrew or Chinese, or those employed in shorthand writing…"

Figure 10 below shows the receiving instrument in plan; my selective annotations to the right. See Figure 18 further below which, while intended to illustrate the electrical connections, usefully shows the entire system, including transmitting instrument on the left, and the receiving instrument on the right.

…a brief outline of the system will be first given. The system consists primarily of two instruments; a transmitting instrument and a receiving instrument. The transmitting instrument consists primarily of a transmitting pen which can be moved by the operator over a field of considerable extent. If the instrument is designed for transmitting messages in writing the field will be equal in one direction to the length of a line of the writing and in the other direction to the distance above and below the line occuped by any character. The transmitting pen is arranged to control resistances located in two electric circuits and arranged to increase and diminish the strengths of the currents passing over their resepective circuits, as the pen is moved along the length of the line and above and below the line. These two circuits pass through the receiving instrument and are connected to two electromagnets the armatures of which control two levers in such manner that the levers are caused to vibrate a greater or less distance according to the strengths of the currents passing through the magnets. By this means the movements of the transmitting pen along the line and above and below the line will, through the variations caused in the currents passing over the circuits, impart corresponding movements to the two levers in the receiving instrument. The movements thus imparted to the two levers in the receiving instrument are, through suitable connections, transmitted to other parts of the instrument, preferably directly to the receiving pen, in such a way as to exactly reproduce the movements of the transmitting pen and thus reproduce an exact fac simile of the line of writing or other matter written or traced by the operator. ¶ Cooperating with the receiving instrument, or forming a part thereof, is a means for supporting a sheet of paper or other recording surface, either in the form of a continuous band or strip or in the form of a pad or a detached sheet, in proper position beneath the pen to receive the message and a means for shifting this paper after the completion of each line of writing, so as to bring it in proper position beneath the pen to receive the succeeding line. (2:23ff)
 

The main feature of this patent may be the dedication of line current to signal (pulsations), and use of escapement-magnet and relay for mechanical operation.
 

The arm mechanisms are a kind of pantograph with control, respectively, over movements in vertical and horizontal directions; their combination of course yields movements in all other directions.

Ritchie had been an assistant to Elisha Gray; this patent represents an improvement on Gray. G S Tiffany's US patents are elaborations of these basic principles. Because the system depended on varying current strengths, rather than coded (telegraphic) signals, it was not suited at least initially to long distances (see Coe).
 

The main outlines of the Gray and especially Ritchie patents are clearly evident in the plan views above. I have not examined this specification closely enough, nor compared it with Tiffany's earlier patents 668,889, 668,890 and 668,895 (all granted February 26, 1901) to determine the exact nature of its "improvements".

Tiffany's 1924 US 1,494,083 involves an automatic exchange for telautograph systems.