[CW] Re: [NoGaQRP] Fwd: [BrassPounders] Interesting subject!!

[David J. Ring, Jr.]

In one of the opening scenes of the "Titanic" movie, there is a bearded tech
who explains the rivets popped from the ship's side "like Morse Code."

Right then, I knew it was going to be "anti-Radio".

I can't prove it, but I have a feeling that it was intentional - there was
at the time the movie came out a big push by EXXON and Royal Shell
(Netherlands) Oil Companies to get rid of the Radio Officers and their hated
morse code.

The problem with Wireless Telegraphy (WT) was that it worked very well, and
up until the time the problems with satellite systems could be overcome,
there was no mode that could be relied upon "all the time" except WT.
(Remember ships had radiotelegraphy before continous wave, so we called it
WT and not CW.)  Radiotelephone didn't work as well, satellites would drop
out of communications but 500 kHz (below the AM broadcast band) had a
ship-to-ship range of over 1200 miles during the daytime and much longer at
night.  See http://www.qsl.net/n1ea/sos.htm for more information on this
subject.

If attention had been given to the job that radiotelegraphy had and
continued to do, then the powers that be probably wouldn't have been able to
get rid of Morse at sea.

With Morse Code being appreciated, I doubt that the "code/no code" debate
would have much footing as it would be clearly seen that except for
satellites, there is a clear and continuing need for morse radiotelegraphy -
CW - to hams everywhere.

Spark was certainly not like the sound of CW, but I remember seeing the
Titanic exhibit that toured many cities, including Boston where I saw it,
and they had an exhibit of radio - and recordings of morse code.  I was
really disappointed that they had recordings of hams instead of ships
calling with traffic on 500 kHz - why not have the REAL thing.  Listening to
500 kHz was very interesting, as we had all sorts of different sounding
tones.  Chirps, buzzes and tone modulation were every day occurances.  It
was a thick soup of QRM most days.

Tony Lacy - the author of "Nu Morse" has a program called "Weaver" that will
reproduce the sounds of spark and of a British Marconi ship transmitter.
http://www.nu-ware.com/  Weaver is a program that will take a text file and
send in different sounds.  It is an interesting program.

Some of the subscribers to CW reflector might want to hear the sounds of a
spark transmitter or a quenched gap spark transmitter - or other types - and
Weaver would be a good program to download an play with to hear this.

73

David N1EA


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <N2EY at aol.com>
To: <k4kyv at hotmail.com>; <cw at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 8:31 PM
Subject: Re: [CW] Re: [NoGaQRP] Fwd: [BrassPounders] Interesting subject!!


In a message dated 1/11/06 5:01:29 PM Eastern Standard Time,
k4kyv at hotmail.com writes:


> >But the Californian's receiver used a magnetic detector, which had to be
> >wound up periodically, like
> >an old-time phonograph. The officer forgot to wind up the detector, and
> >so
> >heard nothing at all.
> >
> >73 de Jim, N2EY
>
>
> So that's what they were talking about in the late 50's version of
> "Titanic," which has a scene in the radio room and one of the ops mentions
> "winding up the detector."

You mean the film "A Night To Remember", based on the book of the same name.

Oddly enough, the book tells how the officer forgot to wind the detector,
but
the film shows a different scene.

>
> That was probably the most authentic film version of the story.

By far. No fictitious characters or made-up love stories. Typical British
film,
made more dramatic by its understatement.

Of course they didn't know the ship broke in two, and didn't have all the
special effects of modern films, but the drama worked nonetheless.

There's one sequence where a first- or second-class man finds out what's
really going on. He goes to his cabin and wakes his wife and children,
dresses
them and
sees them into a lifeboat - then steps back, since it was "women and
children
first".

No shouts tears, or hysteria. He and his wife hold each others' glance as
the
boat is lowered out of sight.

The radio
>
> transmitter is shown in operation and actually sounds like a spark rig.

The Morse is authentic, too - rare in a modern film, but after all, this
wasn't a modern film.

Look for a very young David McCallum as one of the wireless ops at MGY


> There is a very chilling scene at the end, when the ship begins its final
> plunge.  The people remaining on board scream in unison, sounding very
> much
> like the reaction you hear in a packed stadium during a sports event when
> a
> team scores a goal or a foul is called.  That's undoubtedly exactly what
> it
> sounded like on the Titanic.
>

Survivors' accounts agree on that.

Walter Lord, who wrote the book, had access to many of the survivors and
interviewed as many as he could.

>From what I have read, the Titanic disaster was almost forgotten for nearly
40 years. While it was front-page news for a long time in 1912, the horror
of
WW1 caused it to fade into obscurity. Lord's book seems to have rekindled
interest.

>
> There was a network TV version of the story that came out shortly after
> the
> recent Leorardo DiCaprio film, in which the Morse code signals in the
> radio
> room sounded identical to modern CW on a receiver using a BFO.  I was
> disappointed in the DeCaprio film, in that there was no scene actually
> showing the transmitter in action.
>

The biggest disappointment I had with the Cameron film is that the role of
wireless, the Californian and the Carpathia was so downplayed. Californian
is
never mentioned, and Carpathia gets perhaps two scenes.

I have read that a number of scenes were filmed in the wireless shack, but
were edited out to reduce the running time. The radio room itself was
painstakingly and recreated, yet is on screen for less than a minute.

Perhaps someday someone will make a film of the Carpathia's daring rush
through the ice field...

73 de Jim, N2EY
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