Wood engraving "In einem Telegraphenbüro. Aufgabe der Depesche" (In a telegraph office. Assignment of the telegram)

This wood engraving from around 1850 shows a telegraphist checking a telegram with the Morse key. Under the telegraph table was a box with 8 batteries, according to William Groove. These galvanic cells produced the current for the telegraph. A galvanoscope was placed on the table behind the Morse key to determine the approximate current. The pen writer in the picture, from the period before 1852, pressed the Morse code into the paper with a steel tip.