I don’t know what telex is!
Telex was like a cross between a typewriter and a fax machine, I think fax machines did for telex just as email, eventually, did for the fax machine.
They were cumbersome.
Telex was like a cross between a typewriter and a fax machine, I think fax machines did for telex just as email, eventually, did for the fax machine.
They were cumbersome.
I really like that panel five close-up!
…we still have Fax at work. Well the one in our branch died and Head Office are taking their time with a replacement, but still try to fax us stuff. I bet the company was using Telex well beyond it’s time as well.
I believe that the NHS still uses a lot of Faxes.
Anywhere the law could get involved will do. Faxed documents are admissible evidence in court, while more modern and more relevantly more secure forms of document transfer are not.
Is that Pepper? How old is she now?
Mongrels (the best breed of dog) can live a very long time.
And old guy near us died, and he had an 18 year old dog. His home help took it as his family didn’t want it, and – well, it was 18 – how much longer could it have left?
Answer – FIVE YEARS!
He used to come courting our Lady Dog, and sat outside our back gate in the most bitterly cold weather (I have to admit I fed him). I would ring his new mam and she would come and take him home, but in a couple of days he’d be back, shivering and whining, having got out of the house AGAIN. He was like a bag of bones covered in shabby coconut matting.
Lovely-natured dog though. It broke his mam’s heart when he died.
I confess, I have absolutely no idea where this story’s going. I’m on the edge of my seat.
I just googled 345-3669. It seems to a standard code for a gauge AS-oil level also known as a dipstick.
The last digits were 3889 in the bubble
Pepper doesn’t seem happy with that phone call. Are his dog senses warning him of something bad on that mysteriousold man? The dialogues are so refreshing♡. I love the way Lottie and Mildred talk to each other. So natural and full of jokes ♡♡
I guess that means the John in tomorrow’s strip title* doesn’t refer to the author after all. Hmmmn. Unless tomorrow’s strip* makes us all groan “please” at the author… I guess we’ll find out tomorrow*.
*where “tomorrow” is taken to mean “the next update day” rather than the literal day after today.
I prefer to think of telex as the precursor of Napster, but for typed messages rather than mp3 files.
I’m so old that I remember using a telex machine at a job I had from 1982-85.
My first (gap year) job was as a computer operator with IBM on the system that managed their private telex network. We used a lot of paper tape. (Telex machines liked paper tape.)
Yes, I’m old.
I will be releasing the print version of this story exclusively on Telex tape.
I know where you’re coming from. I used to load the OS for a CDC mini from paper tape. How can I feel nostalgic about toggling in the bootstrap?
Pepper’s a he. But he’s been sorted out. His test icicles are in heaven.
Hah! My Grandfather back in the 80’s used to send out parts requests on a Telex (or something very similar.) He never learned to type, but he was amazingly fast with just two fingers. They’d get in parts requests on the thing too. This is long before anything resembling the internet existed for us common folk.
Here in Atlanta, at WRAS-FM, the 100,000 watt student radio station of Georgia State University, Bob Geldof was doing a promo visit one morning almost exactly 22 years ago when the DJ thought it would be fun to have him read the news.
So he reached over to the telex machine and tore off the incoming wire service breaking news about a shooting at an Elementary School in San Diego.
FORTY-two years ago next Friday, not TWENTY-two. Duh. Curse you, lack of Edit function
Is that..a trim phone. With radioactive isotope impregnated dial for full on Glow-in-the-dark wholesome goodness?
Looks like it to me!
I thought we were such a cool family for having one. Oh the fun we had watching the uninitiated attempt to replace the receiver.
And the sheer confusion of the BT engineer attempting to plumb it in to my flat when I moved…..
Maybe 40 plus years of exposure to its unnatural rays has some deep significance to this story yet to come? Tritium powered performers?
Fun fact: EU regulations state that if your flight is sufficiently delayed, the airline must let you send two telex messages free of charge. Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, Article 9, Paragraph 2.
I can’t remember the last time someone answered the phone by stating their number. Or is that more common in Britain?
It was meant to seem archaic!
It succeeded. Though I only broke the habit a few years ago. Of course, now that most landline calls I get are frauds, I want to give them as little information as possible. I’ve mastered a completely flat intonation on my “Hello”.
Ever since I started answering even my cell phone with “Hello, this is Douglas, how can I help you?” my spam and fraud calls have dropped significantly. I get a few hang-ups these days though.
I’m considering adding “IT department” to the greeting.
I’ve taken to answering our home landline phone with absolute silence when I don’t know the calling number. Robodialers will usually give up and disconnect the call after a few seconds.
Hah! When I moved in to my current place, I got a landline, y’know, Just In Case… But I never gave the number to anyone (I don’t even remember it anymore). Anybody I want to contact me can still use my cell #. So I ignore my landline when it rings. Pro: no answering spam calls. Con: If Godzilla ever comes to my town, I’ll miss the alerts and get crushed whilst listening to Tori Amos.
I now answer the phone using a faux-Eastern European accent and claiming to be the cleaner and that I can’t buy any double-glazing because “I not have authority” – also I can’t bring my employer to the phone because “Lazy Cow! she still in bed”
Irina has saved me a lot of wasted conversations – they probably know she’s false, but also know they are on a hiding to nothing.
I still say ‘256’ when answering the phone at my parent’s house out of conditioned habit.
Never done so anywhere I lived after going to Uni.
Your parents have a 3 digit phone number? How old are they??
“The Telex machine is kept so clean, and it types to a waiting world.”
~*-_PEPPER_-*~
Hah I haven’t seen a telex since HS programming classes.
Playing Star Trek on that used up paper rolls really fast as they drew each screen in text graphics.
In the shed of my housemate’s mother, there is one looking to be in prime condition. To put this in perspective, she also refuses to have the freezers of her late parents cleaned out and they’ve been running for a number of decades with historic food in them.
That is . . . disturbing . . .
(I nearly said “chilling” but caught myself just in time.)
I wish the Fax Machine were truly extinct, but… it’s not! My dad got swamped by dealing with a group that sends stuff via fax.
For some time in 1990s, there existed telex ‘machines’ that looked and worked like a computer modem. And telex and teletype lines were wired into local switchboards anyway. Hard-wired actually.
These panels are *so* Watchmen!
When Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley had an office together, their Telex # was “PARKBENCH”.
That was 100% of my Telex knowledge before reading this thread.