A telex must not be turned off, shut off or left off overnight or weekends.
It does not burn any juice.
The hum you hear when the motor isn't running is the looseness of transformer coils singing, it does not mean any juice is being used.
There are three shut offs on the machine, these are the shut off in the kneehole below the teletyper, the plug or switch into the mains, and the fuse box which is in the building; this can be pulled off or its fuse burned out.
If the machine isn't humming when you leave the office, it's off, so stop and listen to it just before you close the office door for the night.
Further, because the paper in the machine can jam, you must leave the tape able to run whenever you are not using the machine. Therefore, even if incoming traffic runs into a paper jam and/or end of paper roll, the tape will keep going, then you can, if you come in and find the paper gone or scrunched up, put in a new roll or straighten out the paper and simply run off the tape and you've got your traffic.
Always use an answer back at the end of any transmission to be certain that the message went into the distant machine all the way and that you were still being received at the end of your transmission.
Always date and time your originated despatches, this is not important on answered despatches as you have the name of the despatch being answered.
Never distribute the original copy, it is unique, there is more than one carbon copy but only one original. Therefore, originals must be put into the traffic basket always as soon as received and only carbons distributed to the addressee in the office or the person being infoed.
Keep a slate beside your telex so you can always write down your consecutive despatch number. When more than one telex is in a system you can have a number for each station you are transmitting to, these should be kept on the slate.
Use telex as though you were sending telegrams on short distance calls, you can chat on one if you're speedy but on long distance calls never chat, just send and receive, for the cost is too dear.
At the same time, always send an adequate message so that two more don't have to be sent to clarify what you meant in the first place.
We will not use telex on short or long distances without an absent subscriber attachment and a tape cutter and transmitter. Always cut your message on tape and then transmit the tape unless you can do sixty words a minute without a falter.
When you first receive a telex, use, use, use it, use it all on "local", send lots of messages to yourself, cut lots of tape to yourself, get very familiar with it, then do sending and receiving.
Use it for typewriting inter-office despatches and such and in that way you'll get familiar with it.
An office that has a telex has no business using phone or despatches between it and another station. In nearby traffic only, route everything over the telex. The value of this is to kill the mystery. Phones are psychotic, they have no memory. Despatches are isolated lines. Use the telex for all traffic and educate everybody in the office to read the traffic; fix it up so people can get to the baskets and read the whole traffic daily. Better understanding and co-operation will result, thus better teamwork. Only this justifies a telex, so suppress any feeling that everything should be secret and open up those lines to get everybody out of mystery and cracking. If you do this the telex is worth about £5000 per year. But if you use phones and despatches alongside a telex, you've defeated its purpose entirely. And it will serve no other useful purpose.