In 1870, Émile Baudot devised a five-bit code that could represent every letter, numeral, and punctuation mark needed for telegraph transmission — an encoding so efficient it remained in commercial use for over a century. The punched tape strips bordering this page encode real ITA2 Baudot: RTTY.COM on top, DE W2TTY on the bottom.

The definitive introduction to amateur RTTY, written by Irv Hoff K8DKG for Frederick Electronics Corporation. Covers Baudot telegraphy theory, the mechanics of teletype machines, terminal unit design, and getting on the air — all from the perspective of the designer behind the Mainline TT/L, ST-3, ST-5, ST-6, and UT-2. As useful today as when it was written.

Ham radio operators in the 1960s and 70s discovered that the teletype’s fixed-pitch uppercase characters could be composed into images of surprising richness and detail. The overstrike technique — CR without LF — allowed multiple characters to print on the same position, creating dense shading effects impossible with a typewriter. The gallery collects the best of this tradition, viewable in the browser using a JavaScript renderer faithful to the original Baudot format.

ITTY is a live audio stream encoding Baudot RTTY signals at 60 and 100 WPM — the same format the AP and UPI ran on their wire circuits. The audio is standard MP3, playable in any browser or media player. Connect your machine, tune your modem, and the news prints just as it would have in 1965. Four channels broadcast 24 hours a day.