I am looking for information on the use of the Hughes Telegragh in the WW I period I understand it was widely used by the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies during this period. Does anyone have any other information on its use?
I am also looking for information on talking to someone by telephone long distance during the WW I period. I read somewhere a person had to talk loudly or shout to be heard? Is this right? any other information would be welcome. Thanks in advance.
Wish I could help - from the little I see, the subject seems fascinating.
Long distance telephony - the microphones and receivers were being continually improved and the early types were certainly far less efficient than those in use by the next war (and suffered some degradation with use, particularly the granulated carbon microphones - and the very early receivers were of essentially the same construction as that of the microphones, come to think of it). Shouting must have been normal if those old movies of even a decade or two later (following much improvement) are to be believed.
The networks also would have been underdeveloped, to the detriment of 'line' quality - perhaps not all exchanges in the chain were "four wire" connected, conceivably there could even have been single wire (earth return) segments which would surely have been of variable quality and marginal at best. Competing/foreign networks - that might be another variable, even today or in recent times anyway those are not entirely compatible for any signal traversing them.
You may need to visit one of the museums of telephony and buttonhole a curator there to get a useful level of information. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of readily available sources, even in general references much closer to the era than we are today. I checked my 1950s Encyclopedia Britannica and it is pitiful.
The Hughes telegraph was invented in 1855. It was (effectively) a Morse modem which took a signal from a telegraph line encoded in Morse code and printed the characters
on a strip of paper. The Hughes telegraph became the standard telegraph system in Europe. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edward_Hughes).
