The Telegraphone

The telegraphone allowed voice calls to be made over traditional telegraph circuits while still also carrying telegraph communications. Conventional telephones used a balanced pair of wires to carry the signal, giving high call quality. However, the D&RG(W) had many miles of single conductor telegraph circuits, as telegraph systems typically used the earth as the return path. The telegraphone was a telephone designed to attach to an earth-return telegraph circuit, was capacitively coupled to the line so as not to load it and contained appropriate filters to only pass voice frequencies, thus allowing it to operate transparently on an active telegraph circuit.

The device was invented by William B. Glardon during his ten years as a telegraph operator with the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad?. After his railway career, Glardon went on to commercialize his invention by founding the National Telegraphone & Supply Company in El Paso, TX.¹

The Rio Grande rolled these devices out extensively around 1904.² Stations and phone booths across the system received wall-mount units, and portable sets were assigned to cabooses and many coaches in case of emergencies. The Rio Grande Southern also installed them in every caboose and baggage car around the same time, as the device was credited with speeding the removal of a large boulder from the line near Sawpit, CO?, on 5-Mar-1905.³

With little incentive to upgrade the communications system along the narrow gauge lines, the D&RG(W) continued using the telegraphones until a real telephone system was fashioned out of a pair of old Morse circuits in the 1940s. Even after the real telephones arrived, they primarily only existed at stations. Out on the line, the telegraphones were kept for contact between the dispatchers, the station agents, and those in the field during (mainly) emergencies.

Telegraphones had inadequate range or clarity for day-to-day operations, and thus the telegraph remained the primary tool for the transmission of train orders and other operational information until the real telephone circuits were brought online.

¹ A History of Texas and Texans, Volume III. Johnson, Frank W. The American Historical Society, 1914, p1423

² Silverton Standard. Silverton, CO. 11-Jun-1904, p4

³ The Daily Journal. Telluride, CO. 5-Mar-1905, p1 "Serious Accident Narrowly Averted"