One of our recent research requests came from a retired gentleman in Maastricht, Holland, who maintains a collection of telegraph keys and other telegraph related items. Mr. Anton Klok wrote, “I’ve nearly 300 telegraph items from 28 countries. Morse code is ‘my second language,’ with radio contacts all over the world.”
However, he lacked the instructions to get a specific piece of equipment up and running.
One of the thousands of manuals in the archive happened to be the manual that he was looking for! The CECOM historians have a great collection of old technical manuals, some that date all the way back to the 1930s.
The historians were able to scan this small manual and email a copy to Mr. Klok all the way across the Atlantic. Prior to this, he’d purchased repair manuals for other similar equipment hoping to get the keyer working, but without any luck.
We got a great email from Anton yesterday about the manual. Anton writes, “Your help before was splendid. The keyer, in working condition, is a nice item in my telegraph collection.”
To see more of our technical manual inventory, click the link for our website here: http://cecom.army.mil/historian/techmanuals.php
Note: All photos of the equipment were furnished by Mr. Anton Klok and used with permission. The photo of the manual cover is a US Army photo.




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