Telex Machine

The modern Telex system with its 800,000 subscribers in more than 100 countries (1978) is the combination of carrier telegraphy and teletypewriter. By temporarily connecting lines and switching equipment, subscribers can communicate directly with one another by means of teleprinters.

Telex service is analogous to the public telephone service except that machine-printed messages replace speech. The printed record makes telex particularly usefull in the business world, which requires the authority and authenticity of written messages or documents.

This teletypewriter possesses a typewriter keyboard which produces electrical signals that are transmitted to a distant point where the counterpart teletypewriter signals that are transmitted to a distant point where the counterpart teletypewriter then poduces a printed copy from the electrical signals transmitted to it, and vice versa. Messages are sent in a unit code at 67 words per minute. Calls can be made automatically, semi-automatically, or manually, depending on how the machines are set and how the calls are made.

Source : Groiler Electric Publishing Inc. & The World Book Encyclopedia: 1993.