The Slovakian authorities used one to send a message to Dublin that one of their test packages of explosives had not been picked up during their security test and had arrived in the city in the luggage of the poor electrician coming home from his holiers. I only remember ever seeing a telex machine once before, in a solicitors, in 1989. I’m sure many people have never seen one before and don’t know how it works.
Anyone care to share their telex memories?
Did you hear the Slovakian amabassador on Drivetime? Pretty cringeworthy.
I agree with Pidge.
Philip Boucher-Hayes acted like he was a prosecution counsel in a TV series who was going to single-handedly expose the dastardly incompetence of all of the Slovak bureaucracy, and he couldn’t get it through his skull that the ambassador could only give the information that he had been given and that he had come on the programme to apologise for the incident.
PBH even put it to the ambassador that the security official could not have sent a telex (to the wrong organisation we now know) without it being approved by a senior officer. Are PBH’s telecommunications controlled in that way? Does he need permission to use an office phone?
I loved the moment near the end of the interview when, after PBH demanded to know why the Slovak government had sent him on the radio if he couldn’t answer PBH’s question, the ambassador explained that he had not been sent on by the Slovak government but had agreed to come on air at the request of RTÉ.
I think RTE has a question to answer about why the producer or editor allowed PBH to continue the hostile and aggressive line of questioning after the ambassador had explained why he could not answer the kinds of questions PBH put to him, especially after he had explained that for the second time. Do the Drivetime team think natural justice does not apply to evil incompetent foreign officials who are subject to an investigation?
And why did Drivetime not give more credence to the resignation of the senior police official? (When was the last time an Irish official resinged within days because of a serious cock-up in their public body?)
They’re kept so clean and type to a waiting world!
Wasn’t there a chocolate bar called Telex?
Deep in the bowels of my office we still have a telex centre.
Very few people are allowed in there oddly enough.
I did some work in Russia in the early 90′s and the telex was the main form of communication to/from Ireland. I was mostly used in offline mode for memo-swapping, but also had a ‘chat’ mode – like instant messenging, just on paper!
Saw these in a tourist office in Kilkenny in the early eighties. Yikes.
I lived right beside the meteorological station in Malin Head so I’d saw them quite a bit. Whenever my friends dad was working he would give us the scrap paper that had the ink on it and we would use it to trace stuff.