Saturday, Aug. 4, 2012 — I haven’t mentioned this yet in my blog, but one of my most interesting bathroom reading materials these days is the complete collection of The Vail Correspondent I recently purchased on eBay.
What exactly is The Vail Correspondent? It was a quarterly journal for telegraph key collectors and published by noted collector Tom French, W1IMQ. The Correspondent was published from October 1992 through July 1998. Its 24 issues includes more than 500 pages of information you won’t find anywhere else. The Correspondent includes information on landline telegraphy as well as straight keys, bugs and assorted telegraph apparatus.
I have a complete collection of these, and I have found numerous bits of useful information about the keys I collect. If you collect keys, you’ll find the Vail Correspondent fascinating reading. They are available as PDF files on CD, which is the easiest way to handle them. Mine are paper, but I have considered buying the CD just for good measure.
What’s in the Correspondent that makes it fun to read? One of my favorite articles was the editor’s description of his visit to the Vibroplex “factory” when the company was located in Maine. The Correspondent was also one of the first places you read that the company was being purchased by Mitch Mitchell, W4OA,, who moved the company to Mobile, Ala.
To find out how you can own your own paper or digital copies of the six-year run of TVC, click here to visit the Artifax Books website.
TVC editor Tom French is author of another book no key collector will want to be without — a biography of Ted McElroy, world’s fastest radio telegrapher. It too is available as a pdf file on CD. BOTH are well worth your time and money! I would also recommend Tom’s other items he sells — used books and telegraph keys among them.
-30-