I had, while I was on the H——road, a particular friend, an engineer. We were inseparable, and were both of us, alike, given to fits of despondency, at which times we would, with choking dread, bid each other farewell, and “hang around” the telegraph office to hear the welcome “O K” from the various stations, signifying that our trains had passed “on time” and “all right.”
Over nineteenth-century telegraph wires OK would have been sent in the original Morse code, also known as American Morse or Railroad Morse, in the pattern dot-gap-dot dash-dot-dash, rather than dash-dash-dash dash-dot-dash of today’s International Morse Code. The O was signaled by two dots with a long intracharacter gap to distinguish it from I, which used two dots with a short intracharacter gap.
Just a decade after the locomotive engineer’s reminiscences, telegraph communications showing extensive use of OK were transcribed in a book complaining of inappropriate use of Western Union wires by the government’s Signal Office in Washington, D.C. “It can hardly fail to excite surprise that the Signal Office should interrupt and suspend the business of the public on the great commercial lines of the country during the most active hours of the day with such trifling matters,” the authors complain. Here are some samples they use as evidence:
CONVERSATIONS AUGUST 7, 1871
Signal Office to Boston.— The Secretary of War asks, “What is the weather and thermometer? Is Observer about there? Tell him yourself, if not.”
Boston to Signal Office.— “Weather hazy—pleasant—East. Don’t know about thermometer.”
Signal office to Boston.— “Thanks of the Secretary of War. O. K.”
Signal office to Chicago.— “Is S. or G. there?”
Chicago to Signal Office.— “Who do you want?”
Signal Office to Chicago.— “Is S. or G. there?”
Chicago to Signal Office.— “Yes, wait a minute. I’ll get them.”
Signal Office to Chicago.— “Good morning. The Secretary of War is here again. Are you working through to San Francisco? Can you put West on for a minute?”
Chicago to Signal Office.— “West O. K., can put it on here, but it will be slow work. I can repeat it quicker than you can work through, and make it appear as though you were working direct. Won’t that do?”
Signal Office to Chicago.— “He has nothing important to say. Only wanted to see if wires would work. He has been trying the Franklin lines, but there is not much show for them.”
Chicago to Signal Office.— “I’ll put it on if you think best; but this is the very worst time of day for our business.”
Signal Office to Chicago.—“Let it go till some other day.”
Chicago to Signal Office.— “Suppose you arrange for to-morrow morning, say 10.30, Washington time, then I will have every thing ready. I am short of wires and crowded with business now.”
Signal Office to Chicago.— “O. K. Will let you know. 12:30.”
AUGUST 9, 1871
Chicago to Signal Office.— “Who are you calling?”
Signal Office to Chicago.— “Is Cheyenne and Corinne [Utah] here?”
Chicago to Signal office.— “Yes.”
Corinne to Chicago.— “Do you want us?”
Chicago to Corinne.— “Yes. Washington is here, and wants you. Answer him.”
Signal Office to Corinne.— “Please give the Secretary of War the state of the weather.”
Corinne to Signal Office.— “Little hazy. Thermometer 75.”
Signal Office to Corinne.— “O. K.”
In 1876 a Manual of Telegraphy, Designed for Beginners, by a Professor J. E. Smith, explains the practice:
One office desiring to communicate with another, makes the call of that station three our four times, then gives his own office signal, and keeps repeating this until he receives a reply, or gets tired of calling.
An office answering a call makes the letter I two or three times, more or less, then its own call.
An acknowledgment of the receipt of any kind of communication is made by returning O K, followed by the call of the office receiving the communication.
Writing one’s own office call is termed signing; and this must be done once and only once, at the close of everything that is written over a line, be it calling, answering calls, giving O K, sending messages, or conversing.
An acknowledgment of the receipt of any kind of communication is made by returning O K, followed by the call of the office receiving the communication.
Smith gives an example of a message from Boston:
In acknowledging the receipt of a dispatch, Boston replies with O K B, or sometimes precedes the O K with the letter I a few times.
No communication is ever sent until the office to receive it has been called, and a reply has been returned; and no message is ever regarded as transmitted until the office receiving it gives O K, or commences to send back other dispatches.
The Atlantic Cable
The laying of a telegraph cable across the Atlantic, from Ireland to Newfoundland, was also marked with OK. In July 1865, in the midst of laying the cable, the Great Eastern sent this telegram to shore:
The cable is all O. K. again. The signals are perfect. A small fault was discovered and cut out. The Great Eastern is now paying out the cable in latitude 52 degrees, longitude 12 degrees.
A week later that cable broke. But in 1866 the Great Eastern tried again with a new cable and managed to salvage the old one as well. A British chronology of major events of 1866, telling of this successful voyage, included a technical explanation of OK for its English audience:
But what of the electrical condition of the cable during this period? Simply through its entire length it was perfect, or, as it is technically called, O.K. (all correct).
OK on the Moon
Although it would take another century before Americans actually landed on the moon, OK was already put to lunar use in a science fiction story by Edward Everett Hale published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1870 and 1871. The moon of this story was an artificial satellite, a “brick moon” accidentally launched with people aboard and circling the earth at an altitude of five thousand miles. Responding to a message delivered literally in leaps and bounds in Morse code by the thirty-seven people on the brick moon, using huge strips of black crepe,
Haliburton showed the symbols for “I understand,” but he could not resist also displaying . . —. —, which are the dots and lines to represent O. K., which, he says, is the shortest message of comfort. And not having exhausted the space on the Flat, he and Robert, before night closed in, made a gigantic O. K., fifteen yards from top to bottom, and in marks that were fifteen feet through.
After a pause, the united line of leapers resumed their jumps and hops. Long and short spelled out:—
“Your O. K. is twice as large as it need be.”
A century later, on July 20, 1969, it could be argued that the first word spoken when the first humans actually landed on the moon was not Neil Armstrong’s “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed” but rather, fifteen seconds earlier, Buzz Aldrin’s “OK. Engine stop.” In any case, Armstrong’s second statement after landing was “OK, let’s get on with it. OK, we’re going to be busy for a minute.” (A transcript of the full conversation appears in Chapter 13.)
OK for a Bribe
Further evidence of the business use of OK comes from details of shady business conducted by General William W. Belknap, secretary of war in the early 1870s. Apparently in gratitude for kindness to his wife when she was ill, in 1870 Secretary Belknap gave C. P. Marsh of New York City the position of post trader at Fort Sill in Indian Territory. Marsh, however, immediately asked that the appointment be given to John S. Evans, who was one of the actual traders at Fort Sill. In return for the exclusive franchise, Evans agreed to pay $12,000 a year to Marsh, and Marsh kindly sent half of that amount to Secretary Belknap, at first supposedly to help his wife, who died soon after, then supposedly to help the secretary’s child, who also died, a
nd then just for the general himself. This was the cause of an impeachment trial in the Senate. In the record of the trial there are two references to the use of OK by the secretary. Marsh stated that when he sent the first remittance to Belknap, “the defendant [Belknap] admitted the receipt by an ‘O. K.’” Senator E. G. Lapham, in his summary of the case, said that later payments omitted that acknowledgment:
The General did not even respond as when the money was sent by express or mail with an “O. K.” This, I suppose, is one of the military ciphers used during the war by General Belknap. It certainly had a higher signification than that placed upon it by the ordinary Yankee, because it was used by a high official and dignified cabinet officer. Marsh was not asked, and it does not appear when the payments were made to the defendant personally whether he gave a wink or a nod or graciously smiled upon his benefactor. The probability is that after counting the money and ascertaining that the amount was correct he simply said “O. K.”
The use of OK in a formal report was rare enough to merit quotation marks around OK, as well as the witticism about its being a military cipher, but it is clear that it was well known and routinely used.
Bookkeeping
Another glimpse of the business use of OK appears in Business Bookkeeping, published in 1894. Regarding branch store accounts, Business Bookkeeping instructs:
After checking the bills for such goods, to see that they are O. K. (all correct), the branch store turns the bills over to the main store, first debiting “Merchandise” and crediting “Main Store.”
OK Blanks
Meanwhile, to keep track of everything, by the early twentieth century railroads had developed OK blanks. Theodore Dreiser made OK blanks a focus of his autobiographical 1919 story “The Mighty Rourke,” telling of his experience years earlier working for the Irish foreman Rourke on the railroad:
When I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in the engine-room of the repair shop at Spike.…
[He] fished out of the pocket of his old gray coat a soiled and crumpled letter, which he carefully unfolded with his thick, clumsy fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly.
“I waant ye to go to Woodlawn,” he continued, “an’ look after some bolts that arre up there—there’s a keg av thim—an’ sign the bill fer thim, an’ ship thim down to me. An’ thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice an’ take thim this o.k.” Here again he fished around and produced another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick of wood or a nail or a bolt. The company demanded these of all foremen, in order to keep its records straight. Its accounting department was useless without them. At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the “nonsinse av it,” and the “onraisonableness” of demanding o.k.s for everything. “Ye’d think some one was goin’ to sthale thim from thim,” he declared irritably and defiantly.
Dreiser took the OK blank to the “ahffice.”
There I found the chief clerk, a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he now explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to make up his reports. Sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or more, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them. He wanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when I suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed.
Rourke responds to the clerk’s request for an OK blank:
“An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!” he echoed contentiously, but in a somewhat more conciliatory spirit. “He wants an o.k. blank, does he? Well, I expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. I think the man lives on thim things, the way he’s aalways caallin’ fer thim. Ye’d think I was a bookkeeper an’ foreman at the same time; it’s somethin’ aaful. An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!” and he sputtered to silence.
A little while later he humorously explained that he had “clane forgot thim, anyhow.”
OK Ballot
Joe Chapple’s election-year biography of Warren G. Harding, published in 1920, amid a heap of bloviation refers to OK on ballots:
The real biography of Warren G. Harding will be written day by day, in act and deed under the pitiless spotlight of a Presidential campaign. Every word, every inflection, almost every inner thought, is X-rayed by the earnest voter of the country seeking to get the truth concerning the man whose name will appear on over twenty million ballots—the white messengers of authority—scattered over the country like snowflakes on November 2, 1920, on which the voters of the United States are to register with a simple mark of “X” or O.K. with a lead pencil, the measure of the man whom they choose to have as their President to safeguard the interest of home and country while the mad tides of internationalism are threatening our own and other shores.
OK Products
In contrast with its pervasive use in the conduct of business operations, OK has never enjoyed widespread use as a product name. This is for the same reason that a book of famous OK quotations would be so short. OK is just … OK. It is affirmative but value neutral. It affirms that something is satisfactory, but not that it stands out in any way from its peers. Would Satisfactory Soup sell? Would customers flock to a Satisfactory Coffee Shop? Would they book with a Satisfactory Travel Agency? Neither would they be stirred to patronize OK Soup, OK Coffee, or OK Travel.
Still, there are exceptions. OK may be good enough when the implication is that competitors are not. This may be the reason that the very first soap powder manufactured in the United States was called O.K. It was manufactured in New York City by James Pyle, beginning in the late 1850s. By 1862, when the New York Times ran this ad, it was the nation’s leading soap:
THE BEST SOAP IN USE. JAMES PYLE’S O. K. SOAP.
Every housekeeper that tries it uses no other. It not only lessens labor, but, being pure and hard, will go much further than ordinary Soap. It is good for the Toilet, for Shaving, and just the thing for washing Muslins and laces. One pound will make three gallons of good Soft-Soap. In fact, no other Soap is required about the house when PYLE’S O. K. SOAP is in use. The most intelligent classes in New-York use it. Editors of most of the religious papers patronize it. Editors of the N. Y. Tribune and Evening Post use it, and everybody will when they have tried it.
PYLE’S SALERATUS and CREAM TARTAR are also the most popular of any in use, deservedly so.
Sold by grocers everywhere. Manufactured corner of Washington and Franklin sts., New-York.
An 1871 ad in Harper’s Weekly took aim at competitors, implying that they were not OK:
PYLE’S O. K. SOAP.
Good Soap is the desideratum of every economical housekeeper, yet the market is flooded with that which has the semblance, but not the qualities of real soap; and consumers thereof unconsciously incur an extravagant expenditure in the course of time. Pyle’s “O.K.” is a pure article, the economy of which has been thoroughly established.
In 1877 an ad in the Times put it more succinctly:
PYLE’S O. K. SOAP
Renders house-cleaning easy and complete, in half the usual time. Sold by grocers everywhere.
After the success of O.K. Soap, Pyle also introduced Pearline, which was to become the leading laundry soap of the era. Pearline must have been better than O.K., at least as a brand name. Pyle later sold the O.K. brand to Procter and Gamble, which continued to manufacture O.K. Soap until the 1940s. Perhaps the customers of O.K. soap were people who doubted soap could be better than satisfactory.
A Livery in Tombstone
Undoubtedly the most famous OK business in the nineteenth century, however, and the only one whose name remains famous in the twenty
-first century, was a stable in a dusty little town in Arizona Territory. It would have escaped the notice of history except for a gunfight that took place in the neighborhood on October 26, 1881. As is well known to history and legend, the three Earp brothers and Doc Holliday battled five “cowboys” seeking revenge on them, and three of the cowboys were killed.
The O.K. Corral, Livery, and Feed Stable was established in Tombstone in February 1879. Was it named after the proprietor? No, his name was John Montgomery, not Otto Krummholz. There seems to be no record of why Montgomery chose O.K., so it is simply assumed that he made use of a well-known label. It may well be that other stables in Arizona Territory were less than OK.
The gunfight did not actually take place at Montgomery’s stable, but that was where the cowboys had spent the afternoon before the shooting. Perhaps that was why the gunfight has been associated with the O.K. Corral. Perhaps also O.K. was more memorable than Fly’s Lodging House and Photographic Studio, where the gunfight began, or Fremont Street, where it ended.
$1.38 for Penrod
The inability of OK to convey an edge over competing products, to assert more than “satisfactory,” is implicitly satirized in Booth Tarkington’s Penrod, a popular humorous novel, published in 1914, about an eleven-year-old:
There was a partially defaced sign upon the front wall of the box; the donjon-keep had known mercantile impulses:
The O. K. RaBiT Co.
PENROD ScHoFiELD AND CO.
iNQuiRE FOR PricEs
This was a venture of the preceding vacation, and had netted, at one time, an accrued and owed profit of $1.38. Prospects had been brightest on the very eve of cataclysm. The storeroom was locked and guarded, but twenty-seven rabbits and Belgian hares, old and young, had perished here on a single night—through no human agency, but in a foray of cats, the besiegers treacherously tunnelling up through the sawdust from the small aperture which opened into the stall beyond the partition. Commerce has its martyrs.
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