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Morse Key History Infographic
This infographic charts some of the highlight Morse keys and developments over the years, from the original Corespondent key to the Morse paddles used with modern day transceivers
There's more information further down this post so keep reading.
We've collected together some great images of vintage Morse keys and further one, I've given more essential and fascinating facts about these Morse keys and the development of the Morse key in general.
The Correspondent key wast developed and used for the first telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington DC - it was probably invented by Alfred Vail, one of Morse's associates.
A later development, again by Vail was the Lever Correspondent that was much easier to use and set the general pattern for other keys.
As time progressed a numebr of types of key were developed and one interesting type was the Camelback. As the name indicates it has a hump in the lever and this added weight to give it balance.
A later development was the Steel Lever key - the first of this type was produced by James Bunnell as his 'Triumph' key in 1881.
To overcome the repetitive strain injuries suffered by many telegraphers, Horace Martin introduced his mechanical keyer called a Vibroplex in 1904 which used a vibrating arm to produced dots automatically.
Later electronic means of creating not only the dots, but also the dashes were introduced, and now with the electronics for the keys normally incorporated into ham radio transceivers, just the mechanical elements, i.e. the paddle is needed.
