The Globotype is a colour display for
telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
s. It was invented and
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
ed by
David McCallum
David Keith McCallum Jr. (born 19 September 1933) is a Scottish actor and musician. He first gained recognition in the 1960s for playing secret agent Illya Kuryakin in the television series ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E''. In recent years, McCallum ...
of
Stonehouse, Devon,
England. The device features very low cost and does not use consumable supplies. It is Royal Letters Patent No. 2924 issued December 29, 1855. The design and coding used is described in ''Froehlich/Kent Encyclopedia of Telecommunications'', Volume 2, pages 461 and 462. Mr. McCallum invented the Globotype in response to the use of
printing telegraph
The printing telegraph was invented by Royal Earl House in 1846. House's equipment could transmit around 40 instantly readable words per minute, but was difficult to manufacture in bulk. The printer could copy and print out up to 2,000 words per ...
machines which he saw as both expensive and unneeded.
"They are all very ingeniously contrived ... but why attach such combersome expensive machinery for the purpose of printing the letters? If a message must be printed, why not have a man in the office do it? He will do it better than it can be done by galvanic power attached to a telegraph wire, etc. etc."[ -David McCallum
]
The inventor published a small booklet in 1856 entitled: ''THE GLOBOTYPE
TELEGRAPH
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
: A recording instrument, by which small coloured balls are released one-by-one, and made to pass over a series of inclined planes, by the force of their own gravity''. The booklet was originally published by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans of London.
It is cited and described in ''Froehlich/Kent Encyclopedia of Telecommunications'',
[MCCALLUM, DAVID "The Globotype Telegraph" (Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. London, 1856) /] volume 2 pages 461 and 462.
See also
*
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
*
Morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...
References
English inventions
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