Most people are aware of the impact the personal computer (the PC) has had on the
workplace. Printed information is transferred from PC to PC in the form of
electronic mail, and every major company has PCS communication through telephone
lines and satellites to send and receive information between head office and branch
offices, as well as with other companies.
More recently, pictorial, as well as printed information is transmitted almost instantly
over facsimile (FAX) machines and data communications links. In both of these
systems, words, numbers and pictures are sent over communications links in coded
form.
It is doubtful, however, whether many Nova Scotians are aware that one of their
native sons is credited with the invention of the system on which modern data
communications is based. Frederick George Creed was born in Mill Village, Queens
County, Nova Scotia in 1871, and in 1889, at the age of twenty-seven, invented what he
called the "High Speed Automatic Printing Telegraph System." Immediately after Creed
had demonstrated that his system was indeed a major breakthrough in communications, he
established a company in London, England, where he began manufacturing the
Creed Printer.
Creed continued to be involved in the technology he had invented by serving on the Board of Directors of ITT.
The idea leading to the invention of the Creed Printer (the teletype) was conceived in
Canso, Nova Scotia but realized in Glasgow, Scotland. Frederick Creed had moved from Mill Village to Canso with his family in 1878 and by 1885 was employed by the Western Union Telegraph Company in that town. He learned Morse Code and telegraph and soon formulated the idea that one should be able to interface a typewriter to a telegraphy system to send code, and then to receive the code using the telegraph system and a typewriter in reverse order.
Creed set out to invent a means to convert the alphanumeric characters on the keyboard of the ordinary typewriter so that when any particular key is pressed, the Morse Code representing that particular character is created automatically, and transmitted via the telegraph system. Creed worked on this system during the nine years (1888-1897) he worked for the South American Telegraph Company in Peru and Chile, and in the latter year set up a shop in Glasgow, Scotland, to perfect and complete his invention.
In 1898, he demonstrated that he could transmit the Glasgow Herald newspaper to London via telegraphy at a rate of sixty words per minute. By 1913, his system was being used routinely to transmit London newspapers to other major centres in Great Britain and Europe. Creed Teleprinters were sold to Denmark, Sweden, India, Australia and South Africa, and provided almost instant printed communications between heads of state. In 1923, he demonstrated that his system was also applicable to ship to shore communications, and it therefore became a valuable life saving system for ships in distress.
Frederick Creed died in London in 1957. It is unfortunate that the major contribution he
made to the area of data communications technology has not been suitably recognized
by either the Nova Scotian or Canadian
Governments.Frederick George Creed
Nova Scotian Idea......
From am article written by Allan Marble, Ph.D., P.Eng., in the Engineering Journal
