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Berlin—1926
Amidst the clatter and clang of the lab, Dr. Erich Budelmann tapped his pencil nervously on his desk as he scrutinized the device before him.
The air hung heavy with the smell of oil and hot metal in his small workshop at the Berlin Institute of Technology.
He wiped his brow and took a deep breath, fully grasping the significance of the moment.
Years of obsession had led to this—long nights puzzling over circuit diagrams by dim lamp light, hands stained with machine oil and graphite.
His young daughters had scarcely seen him away from his workshop this past year, his wife begging him to rest through an endless parade of dinners left untouched.
But now, on the brink at last, he felt that familiar mix of excitement and fear well up inside him, the very same emotion that gripped him whenever a radical new idea was finally made flesh in metal and wire.
Gingerly, he flipped the switch on the device he had labored weeks to construct.
It was crude still, merely a printing apparatus connected by cables to a telephone receiver.
As electricity hummed gently through its circuits, he tapped a brief message in Morse code—the very first characters transmitted as electronic signals through standard telephone lines.
Immensely simple yet revolutionary.
The message tapped out with crisp finality—"Eureka!"
He watched as the printer chattered to life, transcribing those five letters in German as they emerged from the fluctuations of electric current.
Dr. Budelmann smiled proudly—his telex machine was alive!
No longer would communications be shackled by mere paper and ink.
Distance and time were conquered.
A new electric age had begun.
The telex machine was invented by Dr. Erich Budelmann in Germany in 1926.
The invention allowed written messages to be transmitted electronically via telephone and telegraph lines.
Its distinctive mechanical sounds of printing messages became the backdrop of office environments for decades—helping to facilitate secure international business and diplomatic correspondence.
Budelmann's invention converted text into electrical signals, allowing messages to be transmitted across long distances.
The machine was adopted globally throughout the 20th century.
Millions of telex machines were used in a whole host of industries, helping humanity become globally connected before the Internet.
The telex network was plagued by limitations, including service interruptions, high character-based costs that sparked messaging shorthand, and security vulnerabilities requiring encryption.
Users adapted to the system's constraints by creating new communication norms and workarounds.
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The Telex machine fell out of favor in the late 20th century due to the fax machine and the Internet.
However, Nigeria maintained its telex network until 2013, long after other countries had dismantled their machines.
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