[CW] American vs Continental (was Origin of 'ES'?)

[Donald Chester]

>From: Neal McEwen <nmcewen@metronet.com>

>When American ships could not communicate
>with British ships, we transitioned to the International Morse code.

Could they really "not communicate"?  Since so many of the characters in the 
two alphabets ARE identical, I wonder how well two oprerators could 
communicate, one knowing only American and the other only Continental.  I 
know the numbers would be incomprehensible, but I suspect they could each 
get the gist of what the other was sending, kind of like speakers of related 
languages, for example Italian-Spanish, Spanish-Portuguese, Dutch-German, 
Russian-Polish, etc.  I once listened in on a coversation between a French 
speaker and an Italian speaker discussing directions, and even they were 
able to make themselves understood, each speaking his own language slowly 
and distictly, although not without considerable difficulty.  The code 
interchange would not be 100% copy, but maybe enough to save a life or avert 
a disaster.

Don K4KYV





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