Telegram identification tool Telegram identification tool This website provides some tools for identifying the different Belgian illustrated telegrams, presented on the website The Belgian Illustrated Telegrams.
Many Belgian illustrated telegrams have been available for many years. Most of them were reprinted several times. Often the differences between the various reprints are obvious: different headers, different logos, printing numbers etcetera. But sometimes the differences between the reprints are not so clear. Then reprints can only be distinguished by the distance between certain elements of the telegram.
The easiest way to detect these kind of differences between two telegrams is by putting them together and hold them against the light. This is what you can do if you chose 'compare telegrams' at the menu top right of this page.
You can select two telegrams, one at the background, and one at the foreground. There is also repository with scans of telegrams, so you can compare your own telegrams with these. Further, there are controls to manipulate the position of the telegrams and to increase or decrease the transparency of the telegram on top.
The second tool on this website is meant to measure the differences. After loading a scan of a telegram, you can measure the distance between two positions (A en B). First move the mouse pointer to position A. Then press the left mouse button and keep it pressed. Next move the mouse pointer to position B with the button pressed. Release the button when the pointer is at position B.
To get the correct horizontal and vertical distances, the telegram must be in de right position. There are controls to rotate the scan. The prefered scan-density is 150 dots per inch (DPI), but you can change this settings if you have lower or higher density scans. This tool uses HTML5 and can only be used on modern web browsers.
If there are questions or suggestions, I can be reached via the contact page on The Belgian Illustrated Telegrams.
Brugt Kazemier
