Actually, even after teletype machines fell out of favor, reporters and press agents still used the -30- code at the end of their stories. I was still doing it in the early 1980's. It meant "end of transmission" or simply "end of copy" (where "copy" meant the written text, not photocopy as we use the word today). Here's a grouchy answer from someone who claims it comes from Civil War news correspondents puting "XXX" at the end of their stories; "XXX" is the Roman numeral 30. http://101publicrelations.com/blog/origin_of_30_at_the_end_of_press_releases_000251.html But that doesn't seem to be quite the right answer, or at least, not the whole answer. More detail is added in this excerpt from the book "Wirespeak" by Richard M. Harnett, published in 1998 by Shorebird Press (ISBN-10: 0965741052 or ISBN-13: 978-0965741057) http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?ID=1767 "While acknowledging that the derivation of "30" can’t be proven, Harnett cites Associated Press historians in declaring that the symbol had its beginnings in the numbers code created by telegraph operators. But why 30? Good stories abound. The best ones are hilarious, having their roots, shockingly, in taverns. The more plausible versions, though, are (1) the telegraphers needed a number to end a story and 30 was it, or (2) they used an "XI" to end a sentence, two "Xs" to end a paragraph and three "Xs" (the Roman numeral for 30) to end a story." When telegraphs were expensive, companies wanted to use abbreviations to save money. One way was through use of Phillips code words, developed by Walter Phillips of the United Press news service (now UPI, United Press International). (WARNING: Another source places Phillips with the AP, Associated Press, at that time, see The Nation's Newsbrokers by Richard Allen Schwarzlose, pub. 1989) There's an interesting story about the Phillips code book, first published in 1879, here: http://www.codasaurus.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000042.html Buried on page 45 of this document about New Zealand radio codes is this paragraph -- but I think the reference to "1859" is a typo or simple mistake, because Phillips was only 13 in 1859 and did not start working unti he was 15 in 1861: http://radiodx.com/spdxr/media/DECDXT05LL.pdf "WHERE THE NUMBERS COME FROM Wondered about the use of 73 and 88 in our hobby? Way back in 1859 Western Union in the USA started using the Philips Code as a means of shortening telegraph messages. Certain words, phrases and abbreviations were adopted to reduce transmission time. Many Phillips Codes are still used on CW and by ham radio operators and SWLs today including 73 (not 73s) for “Warmest Regards” and 88 for “Hugs & Kisses”. (via Popular Communications 5/05)" This QSL site is a gallant attempt to put the entire Phillips code book online, and mentions that the last official publication of the Code book was 1925: http://www.qsl.net/ae0q/phillip1.htm The qsl.net site contains this Page One biography: "W A L T E R P O L K P H I L L I P S Born in Grafton, Massachusetts, in 1846, Walter Phillips entered upon a career in com- munications as a messenger for the American Telegraph Company at its Providence, Rhode Island office in 1861. Quickly mastering the art of Morse telegraphy, he became one of the fastest operators of the time. In 1864 he was promoted to the position of "report opr." copy- ing news despatches from the Associated Press. He set a new speed recond by copying 2731 words in one hour. This feat won an award of a solid gold pen from Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse. Phillips joined the Associated Press in 1867 and was made manager of its Washington Bureau in 1868. Ever alert to the value of speed in news transmission, he persuaded the AP in 1875 to establish the nation's first leased wire, for press service, linking the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Wash- ington. Determined to make the AP the fast- est news nervice in the country, he revised the existing abbreviations and codes used in the transmission of press. in 1879 he published the first edition of the "Phillips code" -- a system so fundamentally sound in principle and so easy to learn that it quickly became the stand- ard code used throughout the North American continent." The online book is fascinating to me, because Phillips gives the Morse code sequences for punctuation marks, which I have never seen before. I grew up with the Chicago Tribune system of altering spellings to save space (tho for though, nite for night, etc.) The Phillips Code goes much, much further than that, and wasn't intended to be read by the public as a final result, just used by reporters and telegraph operators to save time and money: Nm for nominate, px for price, xkd for executed, ak for acknowledge, akg for acknowledging, etc. The third page of the online book is here http://www.qsl.net/ae0q/phillip3.htm and gives "30" as a Phillips Morse code abbreviation meaning "no more." There are differences between how Phillips recorded Morse code back then and how it is now. For instance, he has X as . _ . . but the modern Morse X is –..– and he has L as a very long dash, but modern Morse for L is . - . . (the same as Phillip's version of X). The reason is that Phillips was using "American Morse" a/k/a "Railroad Morse," and modern coders use the International Morse adopted in 1865. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Morse_Code Now, American Morse for 3 is . . . _ . (International is ...––). American Morse for 0 (zero) is a long dash, ___ (International Morse for zero is five dashes - - - - - ) In American, 30 would read ...-. ----- and in International, it would be ...-- -----. That long dash at the end of both versions explains why the concluding 30 is written -30- or --30-- (and I've seen ##30## too). But why 30 instead of some other number? The only suggestion I found was the one above, about XXX being used in the Civil War. Here's a good article on Morse code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code And a skimpy article on Phillips code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Code which mentions the 1879 publication date, but not the New Zealand claim above that the Phillips code history dates back to 1859. (It's possible he was promoting the code before he published the book, and that 1859 date makes the idea that XXX or 30 got popularized by Civil War telegraph operators make sense; on the other hand, Phillips was only 13 years old in 1859. Perhaps there were already abbreviations in use prior to his entry into the field as a junior telegraph operator in 1861, while the Civil War was in progress). In 1892, as Walter P. Phillips, he published an autobiography titled "My Debut in Journalism." A very few pages of the 207 page book are online here: http://books.google.com/books?id=xFYdAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22walter+polk+phillips%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=4dzf-CJtMu&sig=8yk3-twqejoshTCWMXQmogms_3I