This telegraph register was made by the famous French company Breguet et Fils of Paris. Established in the late 18th Century by Abraham Louis Breguet to make clocks and watches, the company later added electrical devices to their catalog. Since telegraph registers often used a clockwork mechanism, the company could use existing equipment and skills.
Telegraph registers are electrically-activated printers that receive Morse code messages. The message travels as a series of electrical pulses through a wire. The pulses energize the register’s electromagnets which move a lever-arm holding a pen or stylus. A clockwork mechanism pulls a strip of paper across the pen or stylus, recording the message. Short pulses draw or emboss a dot, slightly longer pulses a dash. The sequence of dots and dashes represent letters and numbers.
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