[ARC5] US Morse Exam History...Commercial versus amateur (OT)

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 21 Dec 2012 at 20:39, Richard Knoppow wrote:

>      The psycology of Morse is intresting: people who can 
> read very well sometimes have awful fists and vice-versa. 

That has not been my experience...so far. Although I am most certainly not 
the fastest code-copier in existence (30 wpm), I try to make my sending 
sound as perfect as possible, and I know many others who do the same.

> Also, commercial ops could take traffic on a typewriter 
> while holding a conversation and have no idea of what they 
> were typing. I wonder how this works.

I have heard of that sort of thing before. In fact, there is some fellow over in 
the Seattle area who teaches high-speed code copying. He can copy two 
different messages from two different sources on two different typewriters, 
one with his left hand and one with his right, at the same time while holding a 
conversation.

I have had some very minor experience at that: several times while I was 
practicing copying 5 letter code groups from NLK or one of the other Navy 
VLF stations on a typewriter, I caught myself unintentionally reading an 
article in QST magazine at the same time.

When I realized what I was doing and looked at the copy, it looked perfect. I 
was amazed. I know of others who do that as a matter of course.

Then there was the story (possibly apocryphal) of the U.S. Army needing a 
message relay station set up in Africa somewhere. This was supposedly just 
before the U.S. invasion of North Africa. The techs who were sent to do this 
were severely under-manned, yet the station was badly needed. So they 
grabbed every local they could find who was willing and set them down in 
front of a typewriter. These folks were told something like "hit this key when 
you here this sequence".

Within a relatively short time period, these folks would be taking traffic on the 
typewriter all the while yapping away to one another in their native language.

Ken W7EKB