Thanks for the delightful info on Jay Quinby.  I was honored to know
and visit with him and his wife at their carriage house abode in Summit
NJ, the Union County town where my family had lived some years before
settling near Morristown.  In addition to the magnificent organ (while
listening, one sat in the wind chest which was their entire living room
- one could feel the slight pressure), the train memorabilia and their
wonderful personalities, there were other attractions.

Jay had been a telegrapher, joining the Marconi and then RCA operations
as a young man.  As was the system at the onset of shipboard
radiotelegraphy, the company supplied the equipment and their trained
operator.  Jay had many tales to tell of those wonderful years, many at
sea.  He always answered his telephone with a loud "Ahoy!"

Jay kept up his interest and skills -- he and several colleagues
maintained their own leased telegraph wire over which they communicated
with each other.  If I recall, he said the "loop" extended as far west
as Ohio and Indiana and then back via a southern route.  More than
once, Jay would hold up his hand to delay our conversation, and listen
to the faint but audible sounder, around the corner in his den.  After
a bit, he'd nod and say something like, "Oh, that's Sam and Bill
talking about the ball game yesterday".

Or else, he'd excuse himself to do the equivalent of "call waiting"
to get on line (different meaning then) and say he'd respond to the
"wirer" in a little while, so that he could continue to entertain us
uneducated, truly "wire-less" folk.  I was reminded that Thomas Edison
could listen to two different sounders clattering away at the same
time, writing down one message in his tiny, precisely legible
lettering with the left hand, and the other with his right.  Jay said
that he hadn't quite reached that proficiency, and remained in awe
of Edison.

Jay was most helpful when we set up our Yesteryear Museum of sound
outside of Morristown, New Jersey - the birthplace of the telegraph
and of the "Morse Code".  Unique in the western hemisphere, Yesteryear
was a museum of sound, communication and entertainment.  It included
a wealth of information from early music boxes to player pianos to
recordings and talking machines, and the history of recordings, motion
pictures, radio, and television.  Naturally, much of this had to do
with Thomas Edison.  We were blessed with a wealth of information and
artifacts from the Edison family.  I was honored to get to know and
visit with Edison's two youngest of six children, Madeleine and
Theodore.

Jay and a friend of his set up a small telegraph exhibit in Yesteryear,
to remind people of Thomas Edison's early years as a telegrapher. It
was complete with telegraph key, sounder, and surrounding tools and
mementos.  The sounder was connected to a tape recording for which the
veteran telegraphers made a tape in Morse Code which clattered away via
the sounder (if we remembered to rewind the tape frequently).

On a couple of occasions I saw elderly gents standing at the doorway,
transfixed and resisting the urging of wife or kiddies to move on to
the next exhibit.  Here was someone who read "old Morse".  Such an
educated listener was regaled with a coded history of Thomas Edison's
years at the key, his inventions for telegraphy - his first field - and
more to his story.  Often such chaps told me they'd visited telegraph
exhibits before, but never one that actually spoke intelligible Morse,
let alone told a story, and one directly related to the history of the
subject.

At times, one of these folk would point out that it was unfair that the
language of the key and sounder was dubbed "Morse Code", when it really
should have been "Vail Code" for Alfred Vail, Morse's assistant in the
red barn outside Morristown, where they strung miles of wire around and
around the walls, and did their tests and experiments.

I knew this, as I attended Alfred Vail Junior High School next door to
the barn -- by then faded to a pink color -- and toured it under the
tutelage of one or the other Misses Lidgerwood, direct descendants of
the Vails.  Members of the Vail family went on to set up and run AT&T.
It's not generally known that Alfred Vail really came up with the
dah-dit code, so I recognized that such conversation came from a real
telegraph aficionado, or else resident of the Morristown area who knew
about and loved history.  Many also proudly knew of the nearby site of
the Seeing Eye, the homes of Washington and Hamilton and Joyce Kilmer
and Thomas Nast, and the location of an early trial of Benedict Arnold.
My home town of Morristown and Morris County are steeped in history,
just as is my adopted home of Appomattox, Virginia!

Among the memorabilia in our small Yesteryear telegraph exhibit outside
Morristown was a hand-written telegraph order blank signed  by Laura
Keene, the star and impresario of a touring show, in which she was
wiring ahead to inquire about the delivery of sets, props and costumes
to the next town.

While this telegram was for a different play and a different time, her
name at the bottom of the form jolted some historians who recognized
Miss Keene as the renowned star of "Our American Cousin", that fateful
April night at Ford's Theatre in Washington when John Wilkes Booth
unleashed his villainy, and set his defeated but beloved South on a
course to bitter destruction in some ways worse than the physical ruin
of the Civil War.  Thanks to Booth and his fellow conspirators, the
results of the oppressive "Reconstruction" foisted upon the South by
an understandably enraged North remain with us today.  Witness all the
controversy about the so-called "Confederate Flag".  Actually, it's
not any of the CSA 'national flags', but the Confederate Naval Jack.

Back to Edwin Jay Quinby.  I think he was 16, when Jay was assigned by
RCA to a tramp steamer called "Ida" on its trip out to and across the
Pacific, up along Alaska and then down the ports of Asia.  A "tramp
steamer" plies from one port to another, offloading what was consigned
to buyers there, and picking up whatever available freight bound to
another destination, adjusting their route as they went.  This voyage
lasted over two years!

As they worked farther south, they hit the last location which had a
land radio station with which to communicate.  With nothing to do, Jay
stayed behind for a time until "Ida" would return on her northbound
leg.  He found himself at the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian
railway, just after the October Revolution.  White Russians and others
desperately fleeing from murderous Reds, begged for transportation...to
anyplace.  Unable to help in any way, and fascinated by the unfolding
events, Jay took the opportunity to ride up and down the railway.

He wrote a wonderful book about all of this, called "Ida Was A Tramp".
It may be hard to locate a copy, but it was published, and I heartily
recommend it.  I just found a number of references in a Google search.
I was fortunate to obtain my copy from Jay himself.  For one thing, it
talks about what was going on in that turmoiled area, with armored
trains racing back and forth.  I told Jay that it was only after
reading the section on that part of his adventures, that only then did
I understand what the book and movie "Doctor Zhivago" were trying to
say about the hated and feared "General Strelnikov" ("Pasha", played in
the film by Tom Courtenay).  I just could not figure what was
happening, but Jay's narrative cleared it up, and I felt like I was
there witnessing it all, which I did not with the larger work.  Jay
told me that I was definitely not the first so to comment, and was
pleased at my joy with his book.  I loved it -- do find and enjoy it!

I had troubles reading "Zhivago" from the beginning, literally.  I
tried twice to get into it, and stalled in the first couple of
chapters.  Seeing the film and putting faces to some of the characters
helped, but I still bogged down with all those various names Russians
use.  Finally someone told me to just skip the first few chapters, and
don't worry about sorting out the personalities.  I was told that I'd
get to know the important ones well enough, and not to worry about the
confusing, multiples diminutives.  It worked.  On my third try, I got
through it.  Quinby's book, Pasternak's, and David Lean's film are all
on my preferred list for all time.

I wish everyone hosting, writing and reading here, a healthful, happy
and successful New Year, and more to come after!

Ahoy!
Lee Munsick

 [ Lee was a founder of the Yesteryear Museum in Whippany, New Jersey,
 [ which displays early broadcasting materials, Edison memorabilia,
 [ mechanical and automatic music, and sponsors educational programs.
 [ -- Robbie