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Concept
Pen register
Summary
A pen register, or dialed number recorder (DNR), is a device that records all numbers called from a particular telephone line. The term has come to include any device or program that performs similar functions to an original pen register, including programs monitoring Internet communications.
The United States statutes governing pen registers are codified under 18 U.S.C., Chapter 206.
The term pen register originally referred to a device for recording telegraph signals on a strip of paper. Samuel F. B. Morse's 1840 telegraph patent described such a register as consisting of a lever holding an armature on one end, opposite an electromagnet, with a fountain pen, pencil or other marking instrument on the other end, and a clockwork mechanism to advance a paper recording tape under the marker.
The term telegraph register came to be a generic term for such a recording device in the later 19th century. Where the record was made in ink with a pen, the term pen register emerged. By the end of the 19th century, pen registers were widely used to record pulsed electrical signals in many contexts. For example, one fire-alarm system used a "double pen-register", and another used a "single or multiple pen register".
As pulse dialing came into use for telephone exchanges, pen registers had obvious applications as diagnostic instruments for recording sequences of telephone dial pulses. In the United States, the clockwork-powered Bunnell pen register remained in use into the 1960s.
After the introduction of tone dialing, any instrument that could be used to record the numbers dialed from a telephone came to be defined as a pen register.
Official source
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