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Electrical telegraphy in the United Kingdom

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I've listed this article for peer review with a view to achieving FA status. The GA review of this article by User:Scope creep was thoroughgoing to say the least so I am not expecting it to need too much work, but all comments more than welcome. SpinningSpark 17:49, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Thanks, SpinningSpark 17:49, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Commnents from Andy Dingley

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  • Haven't read all the text yet, but:
  • Lead image - a motorcyclist? It's not really shouting "telegraphy" at me. Maybe an instrument?
  • I make no apologies for the lead image; this article is not primarily about telegraph equipment, that is well covered in other articles. I was particularly keen while writing it not to write a duplicate of the electrical telegraph article (although there obviously has to be some overlap). The telegraph for most of this period, to the man in the street, usually meant recieving a telegram, and that would be delivered by a messenger like the one depicted. Did you have an alternative lead image in mind? SpinningSpark 00:17, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • What's the "PO"? GPO, please! (Or PO Telecommunications, later on)
  • I've now indicated at first mention that "Post Office" is shorthand for "GPO". I had actually edited the page to change them all to GPOs as requested but then changed my mind before saving. There are two reasons to justify this; fistly, many sources use this shorthand, and in particular my main source for the nationalisation to 1970 period (Kieve) does this throughout. Even Post Office official documents do it, except when they are referring to their headquarters. Secondly, and more importantly, I think initialisms in running text break up the flow of an article and make it difficult to read so should be avoided where possible. SpinningSpark 00:17, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just off the top of my head, I could reel off much of the technical history of telegraphy in the UK, but I don't know the social history of it. Who sent telegrams, and how did they send them? Was it all done through the post office, private telegraph companies, or (as in the US) rural communities used the railway systems instead? 5 needle, Morse or Wheatstone clocks? (it notes that the PO switched to Morse, but isn't clear when) What was the public take-up of this, and the split between private, business and official use? How many days of a shepherd's wages did it take to send a message? Did the rich use it, and did it reduce the famously prolific Victorian habit of letter writing?
  • Taking those points one at a time;
  • "Who sent telegrams?" That depends on the period in the 1.5 centuries the system ran. I think the article as a whole paints the picture that more of the less wealthy could send telegrams as the price came down, but I'm open to suggestions for improvements in specific places.
  • "How did they send them?" One sends a telegram by going to a telegraph office. There was nothing unusual about the UK in this respect. Were you looking for this in the article? (a little condescending to the reader imo) or was this just leading into the following comment perhaps? If the latter, I think the article covers this fairly well. The first telegraph lines (owned by the ETC) were along railways and could only be accessed from a railway. Same story with some other companies, but they were all different. The London District had offices right in the city, and probably similar story in other large cities. The Post Office Telegraphs section makes the point that many places only had offices at inconvenient railway staions. At the point of nationalisation, the decision was made to put the telegraph into all post offices, also already in the article. Again, I'm open to specific suggestions in particular sections.
  • "5 needle, Morse, or Wheatstone clocks?" Prior to nationalisation, the system used depended on the company. I think the article already states which of the important companies used which system. The Post Office made the decision to go to the Morse system immediately they had control. As the article says, the changeover was a slow process taking many years with needle telegraphs remaining in use for decades. I also believe that the Wheatstone ABC remained in use in places like remote Scottish islands, presumably because it was uneconomic to send a trained Morse operator out there, but I don't have a source so haven't put that in.
  • "What was the public take-up of this" There is something about the relation between takeup and price in several places in the article. The section on London District gives some figures, as does the "decline and recovery" section and the "End of the telegraph era" section. The latter also has something to say on the split between business and private, and there is something in the nationalisation part about railway usage. What else did you want? SpinningSpark 12:53, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "How many days of a shepherd's wages" I've added a comparison to average weavers' wages, which I think was typical of Victorian workers. SpinningSpark 12:53, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The infamous "garb of a Kwaker" murder case. I've no idea who "John Tawell" was, but I know the case. Wheres Salt Hill? It's better known (in murder histories) as Slough. (So when I first read this para, I didn't even recognise the reference.) Why did they send a message to a Peruvian bear, rather than a railway station? Is "garb of a Kwaker" worth mentioning here, as an example of the limitations of early telegraphy?
  • I'm not in favour of expanding on the Tawell case. It is already covered in depth on multiple other pages. Again, taking your points one at a time
  • "I've no idea who John Tawell was". Is there a more well known name of the case? Tawell was the murderer so it seems reasonable to link to his page.
  • "Salt Hill better known as Slough". I've added that it is near Slough. Although Salt Hill is now a district of Slough, it was then a seperate community with a mile between them, so this is the more accurate term, whatever murder histories might say.
  • "Peruvian bear" done, although Paddington is actually a place, not a bear.
  • "limitations of early telegraphy" The limitations are not limitations of the 5-needle telegraph equipment, they are limitations of the telegraph operators. The limitation is their presumed inability to learn a code. With five needles each able to take on three positions (left, right, and neutral) there are 35=243 possible codepoints, more than enough for the alphabet. But the codepoints used were limited to 5P2=20 by the requirment for exactly two needles to point to a letter. In any event, that is a red herring because the 5-needle telegraph was rapidly ditched and one-needle instruments were in use throughout the line by the time of the Salt Hill murder. The code used was a serial, variable-length code just as Morse is. However, for some reason that is not clear to me, they did not bother to define codepoints for most of the missing letters (at least, not for some time) resulting in the "garb of a Kwaker" message. The proof that this message was not sent by the 5-needle telegraph can be seen in the words "first class ticket", and several other places. There was no codepoint for "C" in the five-needle code, but there was in the one-needle code. SpinningSpark 14:06, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • No mention of code books, like Bentleys. These were very important in British telegraphy, and internationally (they often served as a language translation medium too).
  • Telex. " Western Union who set up a telex system in the United States in 1962, but soon became a generic name for the worldwide teleprinter switched network that developed from 1970 onwards. In Britain, the Post Office moved to automatic switching in 1947, " Ouch. WU had telex in the US from the late 1950s. But (more importantly), telex started in the 1930s, even if that wasn't WU doing it. This is very misleading. Especially when it's followed by the British "moving to automatic switching in 1947". Both this, and the telex article, miss out a huge amount of history because they ignore the development of the British telex network as a military system, as part of the early Cold War defences and the vast telephony network that put into place. (Which British obscurity largely camouflaged as "civilian", only with oddly few customers.) " The address of the recipient was contained in the header of the message which the automatic exchanges could read. " Oh, really? " telex switched to a new telegraph code, ASCII, to aid integration with computers. " Again, ouch. It's not entirely wrong, but it's so misleading. " One of the last groups using the telex service was solicitors, " again. Fax was dominant over telex for a long time, also solicitors were within their own walled garden of their DX system (which encompassed both physical mail and electronic). " use of telegraph private wires and telex was growing" at the same time? By what meaning for 'telex'? Private teleprinter circuits were always expensive and once telex was available there was little need for them. So although telex traffic was growing here and shrinking telegrams, it wasn't private circuits which were growing. Private data circuits were starting to appear, but these were services like Kilostream, using modems (often 4-wire circuits), with little in common with baseband telegraphy.
  • I don't want to substantially expand the telex section. It is on the margins of the scope of this article and only needs covering inasmuch as it relates to the end of the telegraph era. This page has the potential to grow completely out of control. But I will look at some of your specific points. SpinningSpark 16:28, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1962 date for US telex. That's what the source says, and it's also the date the name was registered as a trademark. If you have a more authoritative source, please share. Huurdeman makes a distinction between teleprinter service and telex service with this date.
  • "telex started in the 1930s, even if that wasn't WU doing it" I've reworked this para to make the British role clearer. The pre-war work is in the Automation section, which would not be ideal if we were telling the story of telex, but the sections here are in roughly historical order. The "End of the telegraph era" picks up at the end of the war so I feel that split is justified.
  • "Cold War defences". This would be an article in itself, and as you say, it was as much telephone as telex, but I'll give it a mention.
  • " contained in the header" That's exactly how private sysems I've worked on operated, but it's unsourced so I've removed it.
  • "ASCII...misleading". In what way? I've slightly rewworded that which may address your concern
  • "private wires and telex...growing". That's what the source says. I trust Kieve on this, he took his data directly from Post Office records so he should have got this right. Unlikely to be a more authoritative RS on this. SpinningSpark 21:54, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fax (just not mentioned here). Fax in the UK was pretty obscure until a postal strike in 1989(?), when overnight every business switched to fax. This had a huge effect on business (and medical) communications in the UK. It killed telex. It's reckoned to have set email adoption back by a few years (email in 1989 was effective, but isolated clusters of users on separate systems, without much gatewaying or internet). It went into the NHS and just wouldn't go for decades.
  • Yes, fax was a bit of an omission, but probably because most of the story of fax happened in the US. I've added something to the early history section on Bain who constructed the first machine (at least, one that was used) and added the Bain telegraph.
  • Fax killing telex. I'm looking at this but I'm seeing a lot of contradictory dates in sources for the date of the strike. SpinningSpark 11:37, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Andy Dingley (talk) 13:35, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much for the comments Andy. I don't agree with everything you have said, but I'll try to address all your points in due course. SpinningSpark 16:17, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As it looks like no one else is going to comment, I'll start working through these issues now. SpinningSpark 14:37, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Andy Dingley:. I've now responded to everything. Do you want to give it another look before it goes to FA? SpinningSpark 14:39, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Commnents from Binksternet

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  • The initial image of a single motorcyclist doesn't convey the power and scope of the topic. May I suggest substituting the global map image showing submarine links? Or perhaps a notional map image showing land-locked telegraph lines in the UK at its peak.
  • The lead section is a bit long, one paragraph longer than suggested at WP:LEAD. The lead section could be trimmed of excess detail about unprofitable telegraph companies, about gutta-percha, and about manufacturing companies. But I would not merge any two paragraphs to reduce the number from five to four. Binksternet (talk) 19:38, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • When legislation is being discussed, the word bill when presented alone should not be capitalised.
  • The following sentence should have one instance of "back" reworded to avoid repetition: "After the war, telegram usage went back into decline and the deficit was back in the millions of pounds."
  • The reason for the failure of cable-connected weather ships staying on station somewhere at sea is not explained. A bit more detail should be given to help the reader.
    • The article doesn't say that holding on station was the reason for failure. As far as I recall, neither did the source, but I no longer have it available (it was an interlibrary loan) and I can't find any other source discussing The Brick. The failure could just as easily have been financial for all I know, but I daresay that keeping hold of a cable in deep ocean in bad weather would be next to impossible. SpinningSpark 01:42, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is Folkestone misspelled as Folkstone?
  • It would be interesting to learn how much money was lost in the catastrophic foolishness of Wildman Whitehouse applying too much voltage. A sense of scale would help.
  • Do you think it would be worth mentioning Shelford Bidwell and his scanning phototelegraph, an improvement on the Italian pantelegraph? Binksternet (talk) 23:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • I believe Bidwell's machine was only a demonstration/experiment and never put into use, but if it was, it would have required a telephone type analogue line, not the on/off of telegraph, just as modern fax machines do. So all in all, it is not really part of the history of telegraphy. I'm not all that familiar with it, so willing to be corrected on that. SpinningSpark 11:53, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Binksternet: I've now addressed all your comments. I hope that is satisfactory. SpinningSpark 11:56, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thanks. Your trimming of gutta percha in the lead section was perfect, keeping the essence. The Whitehouse damage figure is fantastic: 210 million pounds today! Amazing they let him live. Binksternet (talk) 14:03, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
They probably would have liked to, but settled for firing him. The incompetence, lies, and duplicity of Whitehouse is quite breathtaking. He actually had better equipment available than his monster induction coil, but refused to use it through jelousy of Lord Kelvin. I might expand this story next a bit in the article on the cable. SpinningSpark 22:17, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

SN54129

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Solid article! Shouldn't much (any?) work to get it from here to fac. Note, my suggestions are just that, and, if you chose, you could wait to action them until fac and see if they are repeated.

  • (the delivery of telegraph messages by messenger from the telegraph office): tricky one. Obviously, telegram service needs to be explained (but does it, in the lead?), but is it possible to somehow avoid the telegraph-message-messenger-telegraph repetition?
    • Done the repetition. In my opinion, the telegram service is important to mention in the lead (and thus what it is needs to be there as well, there are now generations of people who have never had direct experience of it). Receiving a telegram was the public-facing experience of telegraphy. That was what telegraph meant to the public. Once telegraphy came out of the railways era (ie, became commercial), number of telegrams handled was a metric used for the success of a telegraph enterprise. SpinningSpark 09:33, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Talking of the lead, I'd expect the length to be mentioned. WP:LEADLENGTH s no real help—it only advises up to 30K characters. And even then only measures itself in nebulous "paragraphs". How long is a piece of string?
    • My personal rule of thumb is no longer than 10% of article prose. It's a lot shorter than that now. Some large chunks came out after discussion of this point in earlier review comments. If you think there is still unimportant detail there, please highlight it. SpinningSpark 09:33, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The introduction of gutta-percha in 1843 by Scottish military surgeon"—did he introduce it or invent it?
    • Introduced is the right word here. As a natural product, he could hardly have invented it. The alternative, as some sources have said, is to say he discovered it, but that is not really accurate as is explained in his article. SpinningSpark 09:33, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • How about (or Post Office)?
    • What is the issue you are trying to address? To me, using the definite article emphasises that a specific entity is being referred to be the capitalised shortened form, not any old post office. SpinningSpark 10:29, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do we have any detail on the mechanics of Ronalds' eight miles of wire? I'm not sure I can think of another way of putting it, but as it stands, does it rather imply a continuous stretch?
    • Ronalds uses the phrase "one continuous length" [1], but I would hesitate to interpret that as not having any joins in it. In the end, it is not really an important point whether it was mechanically continuous. Electrically continuous is the required property for this experiment. SpinningSpark 10:29, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since the voltaic pile came before the Daniell cell chronologically suggest you swap these sentences around.
    • Not so sure about that, it isn't always beneficial to stick to strict chronological order. This article is about UK telegraphy and it should be focused on developments in Britain, not telegraphy generally. We have other articles to do that. The topic of this paragraph is Daniell's invention, so that should be introduced as early as possible and its importance stated. SpinningSpark 11:56, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is sulfur the US of sulphur?
  • Explanation, perhaps, of "make-and-break contacts"?
  • Davy's wire is copper; Renold's was iron. I guess that's the greater conductivity of the former? Perhaps say so, if that's the case?
    • What you say on conductivity is true, but it's not as straightforward as that. Before we can say anything at all on Davy's or Ronalds' choice of materials we need a source discussing it which I don't currently have. Ronalds' equipment was high-voltage and low-current so resistance was not so significant as on the low-voltage high-current (batteries) of Davy's. There is a large time gap between the two – 1816 to 1837 and industrialisation was rapidly progressing in this period. It may be that long lengths of extruded copper were simply not available to Ronalds but iron wire was plentiful. Copper wire production did not become a big thing until after the electrical industry got established. Ronalds' setup was semi-permanent but Davy needed to rig and derig his demonstration multiple times. It may be that better flexibility of copper was more suited to this. SpinningSpark 13:05, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Talking of which, as that's the second time that the reader has been told about massive amounts of wire helping with a telegraphy experiment, perhaps explain why at the first instance (a footnote, perhaps, explaining its role in the experiment. Ties in with my #4 above.)
    • The opening sentence of the section is The first demonstration that an electric telegraph could be operated over a substantial distance was... Why does that not make it clear enough why so much wire was used? SpinningSpark 13:57, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's true that Davy abandoned telegraphy, but is it worth mentioning that, IIRC, he sold his patents to someone so as to prevent his competitors from using them? (Or somesuch!)
  • Link to railway signalling at first mention? ("He pitched the telegraph to various..."
  • "run suspended and uninsulated"?
    • It means that the wires did not have a coating or wrapping of insulating material as would be needed for cables laid underground or in a conduit. What is the problem you are seeing with the current wording? SpinningSpark 14:31, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "between 1846 and 1870—that is from the formation of the first telegraph company until nationalisation—the telegraph grew entirely"
  • Bearing in mind you've just said "between 1846 and 1870", you could get away with "During the same period..." instead of almost the same date in the run-on sentence.
  • "threatening to derail the bill forming the company...": a parliamentary bill?
    • Yes, I don't know much about company law, but forming a limited company in this period seems to have required a parliamentary bill. Or are you referring to the capitalisation? See Binksternet's comment on that above. SpinningSpark 14:31, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "After 1848 other areas of business started to grow in comparison to the railways" I know what you mean, but it's not really a comparison. Something like "other areas were becoming increasingly profitable"?
    • It doesn't mean that these areas were (necessarily) more profitable, or even profitable at all, although that is what the next sentence addresses. It means that they became a larger percentage of the business and the railway sector became a smaller percentage (but still growing). I don't see why that is not a fair comparison, businesses look at that kind of metric all the time. SpinningSpark 14:50, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The largest telegraph company until nationalisation in 1870...Cooke retired from the company after nationalisation". To remove the repetition, suggest "The largest telegraph company until nationalisation in 1870, after which Cooke retired".
  • "knighted for their efforts in telegraphy in": The usual form of words, I think, is "knighted for their services to telegraphy"; that would also allow you to lose one of those "in"s.
  • "It was not, however, the first competitor": the preceding sentence makes this unclear as to who "it" is: suggest, "Magnetic was not, however, Electric's first competitor".
  • "obtained very few wayleaves; the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway was one of the few exceptions"...could probably reword slightly to lose that second "few"?
More to come! ——SN54129 06:33, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Serial Number 54129: You said more to come, but seem to come to a stop. I've now responded to all your points so far, so if you have nothing else, or don't want to come back on any of my comments, I'll archive the Peer Review and put it up at FAC. SpinningSpark 15:02, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Spinningspark: raps, sorry! I forget to watchlist it, and compleetly forget. I'll have a look over now, and carry on if you want. Just to say, that if you want to go to FAC now I (for what my opinion is worth) don't think there's anything to roundly criticise, so I could make the rest of my points there, they were heneraly just minor copyedits (as noted above). What say you? ——SN54129 15:07, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As much as possible, I'm in favour of bottoming out disagreements and polishing the article prior to going to FAC. Critical remarks can sometimes derail a FAC in the eyes of other, less involved, editors, so let's keep that to a minimum. SpinningSpark 15:20, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Second tranche.
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  • £2 10 shillings (£2.50) and £3: {{Inflation|GBP|2.50|1860|2018}}
    • I've done that, but with reservations. First of all, there is a large number of currency figures in the article. It will become horribly cluttered if they all have an inflation template, especially as all the small and fractional amounts already have a conversion to modern currency. Also, the default index used by the template is the CPI, which is not appropriate for capital expenditure. The template does have a GDP deflator index, which is more appropriate and I've used that, but capital equipment costs are notoriously industry specific and the meaningfulness of the figure the template spits out is dubious. SpinningSpark 19:28, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • which was acoustic rather than visual and allowed... suggest "; acoustic rather than visual, it allowed..."
  • Tricky one, but you should link John Watkins Brett on first use, although I note that the later use is complicated by the presence of his article-less brother.
  • the Brett's company → "the Bretts' company"
  • From about 1857 the Magnetic had an agreement with them that all their submarine cables were to be used only with the landlines of the Magnetic; slightly unclear. Perhaps tighten as "From about 1857 the two companies had an agreement that all STC submarine cables were to be used only with the Magnetic's landlines" or something.
  • Why did Newall's litigation force a removal from the telegraphy business? Because he was losing them business?
    • I don't think he was forced out exactly. I get the impression that he was an unpleasant character to work with and customer's just went elsewhere when they could. The story of his company should have an article on Wikipedia; I know some of it through writing other articles, but it is too tangential to go into details here and is already adequately covered. He stopped the manufacture of the English Channel cable because he claimed it was a rope and infringed his patent. When given the contract for the first Irish Sea cable, he secretly made another one of his own and tried to install it himself before his customer. Some of his work was shoddy, and there was a famous cockup he was involved in when the two halves of the Atlantic cable turned out to have been made with opposite twists making it impossible to splice them together directly. It may be that the formation of Telcon, which had some big-money backers, outcompeted his little show in out-of-the-way Gateshead. SpinningSpark 20:19, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The sentence re. UKTC's Newbiggin-Jutland cable is a run-on; bearing in mind what you said about the difficulty in maintaining chronology, is it possible to move it to a para more concerned with the UKTC's activities? It seems a little out of place in a paragraph entirely devoted to other companies.
  • When was it extended to Russia?
  • The guarantees provided by the government for these two ventures had caused them a financial loss; although the prose only goes on to discuss the Red Sea / India route, unless I've misunderstood. What went wrong with the transatlantic route?
    • The first Atlantic cable laid (1858) was a disaster and stopped working altogether after a few weeks. The second cable (1866) was then done without government backing and was a great success (not saying there was a connection between those two things - draw your own conclusion). I'll try and draw a clearer distinction between cables 1 and 2. I've not gone into the Atlantic cable in great detail because it already has its own article. Also, it was a joint Anglo-American venture, not purely British, although British companies did all the actual work. SpinningSpark 21:44, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think "multiplicity" in the formation of a multiplicity of new companies t will get mentioned.
  • Pender. Pender's first project... could easily be "Pender. His first project..." Or even "Pender, whose first project was to lay a new cable to India. This covered most of the distance..." perhaps.
  • where it would remain in British control and avoid the political and other risks...: Tighten, "so remaining in British control and avoiding the political and other risks"?
  • Have you got anything, apropos all the discussion of overland routes and their concomitant political risks, how they protected these cables once laid in foreign territory?
    • As far as I know, there were no specific incidents that led to British concern. It was more a general desire to keep the whole thing under British control. It was not possible to prevent interference with a telegraph line crossing foreign territory short of gunboat diplomacy (which wasn't out of the question for the British at the time). SpinningSpark 12:49, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know radiotelegraphy has been linked in the lead, but probably should also be at first use in the body.
  • that they could best compete worldwide by merging the cable and radio companies into a single entity: their cable and radio companies?
  • I think "By now, there was no real need for distinct telegraph cables", instead of "anymore".
  • How did they, physically, bury the cables?
  • Retardation is a dab page, anything there for you?
    • No, we don't have an article on this per se. I've added that modern engineers would call this effect intersymbol interference and also added a link to law of squares which has some details of Kelvin's mathematical description. I only recently wrote that page while expanding the Atlantic cable article as an adjuct that would have been a bit of a tangent on the cable page. Retardation as used here is an obsolete and misleading term. The Victorian engineers meant by it simply delay. I'm not sure that they fully understood that the problem was not delay per se, but differential delay. Whitehouse, who destroyed the Atlantic cable because of it, certainly didn't. SpinningSpark 13:43, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • If at fac article-length gets mentioned (not by me), it might be worth thinking of adding a system of footnotes for contextual rather than explicit discussion—the sentence(s) from "Dispersion, as it relates...engineers" was what caught my eye as a perfect candidate.
  • OOC, what happened to the bracingly-named Wildman Whitehouse? His article is unclear, apart from that he was found solely culpable.
  • I'd suggest changing he was a maverick outsider and was ignored to something less in WP's own voice, such as "but as an ouysider—and considered a maverick—he was ignored".
  • The telegraph companies began employing women as telegraph operators early on in the companies period. This needs explaining: what is the "companies period"? Can a date be given instead, to anchor the employment of women in? For example, "...since the 1840s", or whenever you say so.
    • The companies period is the period when private telegraph companies were running things. I can't really think of a better way of stating that. I've now introduced the phrase right at the beginning of the companies section so it should be clear to readers when they get here. On dates, its hard to be precise as this is obviously going to vary from company to company. 1855 is already in the article for the ETC, the main company. I would have given an exact date for the Magnetic if I had one, but since they were formed in 1850, that puts it in a five year window at most.
  • who had few other good options "who had few other employment options" is probably more accurate, as the universal option for an unmarried Victorian woman was not to remain unmarried for long...
  • ETC's salary scheme: inflation template again; people will be keen to know how much women were earning in today's money. In fact, as you go on to say that it was less than their male counterparts (are you reading this, BBC?!), could you state just how big/small the wage gap was?
    • I'd like to have a wider ranging discussion on templates and conversions - see below. Kieve probably gives figures for male workers somewhere, but I had that book on interlibrary loan and it went back some time ago. There is only snippet view on gbooks and I can't get anything that way. However, I will put in something that was missed – that the better social class of women coming to the profession was a secondary reason. SpinningSpark 16:57, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • By the way, the BBC originally based their pay and grading structure on the Post Office Telegraph's system. That explains a lot. SpinningSpark 17:20, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • threepence (1.3p) per day, don't get this: threepence was 3d? (Note it can be linked too.)
    • The threepence article is about a coin, not the amount, so is not really relevant. Not sure what you don't get; 3d = 1.25p to be exact, but we are not going to do two decimal places of pennies in this article – too Mr. Spock. SpinningSpark 16:24, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The 1851 channel cable caused a major boost in the reputation of the telegraph, suggest "the 1851 channel cable boosted the telegraph's reputation further".
  • opening hours. This ability was unprecedented in international communication: how about, "opening hours, a hitherto unprecedented event in international communication".
  • by the companies, especially competition with the District these reads as some (nebulous) companies specifically competing with the District?
Another lot tomorrow! (If you want it, of course.) ——SN54129 16:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, please carry on. I am also keen to hear your responses on any bullets I have declined to do, or questioned what you meant. SpinningSpark 08:14, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to have a discussion on inflation templates. I've been avoiding doing that because of the great number of currency amounts in this article. I feel they interrupt the flow of the text. If we were to include them generally, I think we should at least lose the conversions to decimal currency for the smaller amounts, which were requested at GA review. We don't need both and they are pretty meaningless as that system didn't exist in the Victorian era. SpinningSpark 16:57, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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