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PAPERS AS SEEN BY PRO'S AND OTHERS (5. -30- symbols started with a Western Union telegrapher in Morse Code days. The operator's name was "Thursday" and he signed this to a daily file of stories. Other telegraphers picked it up and made it "thirty" and finally -30-. (6. In pre-typewriter days, all news copy was written in longhand and to indicate clearly the end of their stories, writers adopted a numerical symbol, which as legend has it was -30-. (7. Another reported source is that 30 words were just the right fit in a stick of type in hand-set days. (8. The end mark in the early days of newspapering was space . . . The mark is still used. But when typewriters came along, reporters found it quicker to hit the space key without going to uppercase. What came out was "3" and to tie it up more neatly they added an "0" and "30" was born. (9. When newspaper stories were handwritten, "X" meant the end of a sentence, "XX" the end of a paragraph and "XXX" the end of the story. (10. A telegraph operator whose number was 30 once stayed at his key sending news of a disaster long after his assistants had fled and until death came to him. (11. In the early West, dispatches were delivered by telegraph messenger to the newspaper office. The office closed at 3 a.m. and the operator wrote 3 o'clock at the bottom of the sheet. This was abbreviated to "0," then became "30." (12. When the Associated Press was established each member paper was entitled to 30 telegrams a day. Last of the day's quota was labelled "30." (13. Early telegraph operators had a code for conversation asides on the wire, such as "1" meaning "Wait a minute." So "30" meant the end of an item. (14. The 30 magistrates appointed by Sparta over Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War were called "the 30 tyrants" and were overthrown at the end of one year. The end of the tyrants was heralded as "30." (15. When the New York Associated Press began operations its contract called for a night report of 3,000 words. When that amount was reached the figure "3000" showed. This 415 |
