The following is an excerpt from a patent application of Dr. Louis M. Potts (later to become research engineer for the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Corporation), filed June 17, 1909, giving his idea for achieving a teleprinter intercommunicating system on the synchronous principle. Dr. Potts was a very capable telegraph engineer. His early association was with the telegraph system of the Rowland Telegraphic Company which had limited use in the early 1900s. In those synchronous telegraph systems wherein the sending and the receiving commutator brushes constantly rotate, it is necessary to adjust these brushes so that they will approximately simultaneously engage corresponding segments. To effect this adjustment there is usually provided a special device embodying an additional segment on each commutator, and the adjustment consists in causing the brushes to arrive approximately simultaneously on this segment at the two ends of the line. Such adjustment is known as “finding the letter” and has to be made every time synchronism has been interrupted. According to the present invention, the necessity of providing additional means for performing the so-called operation of “finding the letter” is rendered unnecessary, since the transmitting and receiving commutator brushes at the two ends of the line start up afresh as it were for each signal. In a later patent application, filed October 11, 1913, Dr. Potts stated: This machine has also the advantage of being able to operate with a very short code. In order to adapt it to Morse circuits, it should be capable of operating with a code at least as short as the Morse code. In the present machine, I preferably employ a five unit code which, together with the starting impulse and the lag between signals, is actually shorter than the Morse code. Counting the five code impulse periods, the starting impulse period and the period of lag between impulses, each signal in my case, may be considered in comparison with the Morse code as being seven units long, whereas the Morse code is 8.5 units long. The average signal being shorter than the Morse, the delicacy of adjustment will be less and the distance of operation greater than a Morse telegraph for the same rate of transmission in words per minute. Dr. Potts, however, still depended on like synchronous operation at both terminals, and dual start, so he did not have the answer after all!