R2418 Yorketown Post Office technology
Description
This is a black-and-white photograph probably taken early in the 20th century inside the Yorketown Post Office in South Australia. It shows three men: one is using a typewriter, one identified as Tom Spender is using a morse key, and the third man is using a telephone at a small exchange.
Acknowledgements: From the collection of the National Archives of Australia.
- Educational value
- This asset illustrates the technology available in a post office at the time.
- It shows a caligraph writing machine - made by the American Writing Machine Company from 1882, it was the first typewriter on the market with a full keyboard, with upper and lower case letters; the long front could be used as an arm rest.
- It shows a telegram being transmitted from Yorketown Post Office - prior to the widespread use of telephones for immediate communication, people would send a message, known as a telegram, which cost a certain amount per word to be transmitted from one post office to another by telegraph or morse key.
- It shows a telegraph or morse key in use - telegraphic communication was much faster and cheaper than any other form of communication over a long distance; in the final years of the 19th century, Australia sent more telegraphs per capita than any other nation.
- It shows the telegraphist Tom Spender translating the words written on the page in his hand and keying them in morse code; at the other end, the message would be translated back into letters, printed on strips of paper and pasted onto a telegram form, or printed directly onto the telegram form, and then delivered by hand usually by a young man known as a 'telegram boy' on a bike.
- It illustrates morse code being used - morse code is an alphabet devised by American inventor Samuel Morse for sending telegraph messages over wires; each letter was made up of short and long clicks.
- It depicts the cables and connections for a small manual telephone switchboard - in the days before automatic telephone connection systems, the switchboard operator would connect a group of telephones from one to another or to an outside connection by physically moving the cables on the switchboard from one socket to another; the switchboard in the photograph is small and is probably a local switchboard for the post office itself.
- It illustrates office furniture at the beginning of the 20th century - a wooden table or counter, wooden stools and free-standing wooden shelves.
- It illustrates men's fashion of the time - the three men are wearing high-buttoning three-piece suits, white shirts with stiff, pointed collars and plain neckties, with neat, short hair and a well-defined parting; the young men are clean-shaven, the older man is wearing a moustache; a boater hat is hanging on the wall.
- It was taken in Yorketown, 230 kilometres west of Adelaide on the Yorke Peninsula, which was settled in the late 1840s by a group of farmers who planted crops of barley and wheat, and grazed sheep; the town was named after the surveyor who laid it out in 1872.
- It was probably a photograph posed for publicity purposes, as none of the men appears to be actively engaged in the task they are representing.
- Year level
- 0; 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12
- Topics
- Postal services
- Postal workers
- Telegraphy
- Telephone exchanges
- Learning area
- History
- Studies of society and environment
- Strand
- History/Historical knowledge and understandings
- Studies of society and environment/Time, continuity and change
- Rights
- © Education Services Australia Ltd and National Archives of Australia, 2010, except where indicated under Acknowledgements
