Frederick G. Creed

Frederick George Creed (6 October 1871 – 11 December 1957) was a Canadian-born inventor, who spent most of his adult life in Britain. He worked in the field of telecommunications, and is particularly remembered as a key figure in the development of the teleprinter. He also played an early role in the development of SWATH vessels.

Creed was born in Mill Village, Nova Scotia, and at the age of 15 began his working life as a check boy for Western Union in Canso, where he taught himself cable and landline telegraphy. He then worked for the Central and South American Telegraph and Cable Company in Peru and Chile.

Working in the company’s office in Iquique, Chile, he became tired of using hand-operated Morse keys and Wheatstone tape punches, and came up with the idea of a typewriter-style machine that would allow the operator to punch Morse code signals onto paper tape simply by pressing the appropriate character key.

Creed quit his job and moved to Glasgow, Scotland, where he began work in an old shed. Using an old typewriter bought from the Sauchiehall Street market, he created his first keyboard perforator, which used compressed air to punch the holes. He also created a reperforator (receiving perforator) and a printer. The reperforator punched incoming Morse signals onto paper tape and the printer decoded this tape to produce alphanumeric characters on plain paper. This was the origin of the Creed High Speed Automatic Printing System.

Although told by Lord Kelvin that "there is no future in that idea", Creed managed to secure an order for 12 machines from the British General Post Office in 1902. He opened a small factory in Glasgow in 1904. Two years later the Glasgow Herald adopted the Creed system, claiming that it was three times faster than the rival Morse apparatus.

In 1909, in order to be closer to the Post Office headquarters in London, Creed moved along with 6 of his mechanics to Croydon. Working with Danish telegraph engineer Harald Bille, he established Creed, Bille & Company Ltd. in 1912, with Bille as managing director. After Bille's death in a railway accident in 1916, his name was dropped from the company's title and it became simply Creed & Company.

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