[CW] Keyers and Wartime Comms

[Rich Dailey (Laptop)]

I came across this info while reading thru Malcom Gladwells book titled "Blink - The Power
of Thinking Without Thinking".  This particular passage was comparing the observation of
interactions between husbands and wives to, of all things, distinct fists of radio ops in WW2.
Interesting reading... I don't necessarily agree with the findings, but I was impressed with the
morse code op reference.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBlink-Power-Thinking-Without%2Fdp%2F0316010669%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1186618983%26sr%3D8-1&tag=outoftheeth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

Rich

---snip---

One way to understand what Gottman is saying about marriages is to use the analogy of what people in the 
world of Morse code call a fist. Morse code is made up of dots and dashes, each of which has its own prescribed 
length.  But  no  one  ever  replicates  those  prescribed  lengths  perfectly.  When  operators  send  a  message—
particularly using the old manual machines known as the straight key or the bug—they vary the spacing or 
stretch out the dots and dashes or combine dots and dashes and spaces in a particular rhythm. Morse code is like 
speech. Everyone has a different voice.  

In the Second World War, the British assembled thousands of so-called interceptors—mostly women—
whose job it was to tune in every day and night to the radio broadcasts of the various divisions of the German 
military. The Germans were, of course, broadcasting in code, so—at least in the early part of the war—the 
British couldn’t understand  was being said. But that didn’t necessarily matter, because before long, just by 
listening to the cadence of the transmission, the interceptors began to pick up on the individual fists of the 
German operators, and by doing so, they knew something nearly as important, which was  was doing the 
sending. “If you listened to the same call signs over a certain period, you would begin to recognize that there 
were,  say,  three  or  four  different  operators  in  that  unit,  working  on  a  shift  system,  each  with  his  own 
characteristics,” says Nigel West, a British military historian. “And invariably, quite apart from the text, there 
would be the preambles, and the illicit exchanges. How are you today? How’s the girlfriend? What’s the 
weather like in Munich? So you fill out a little card, on which you write down all that kind of information, and 
pretty soon you have a kind of relationship with that person.” 

The interceptors came up with descriptions of the fists and styles of the operators they were following. They 
assigned them names and assembled elaborate profiles of their personalities. After they identified the person 
who was sending the message, the interceptors would then locate their signal. So now they knew something 
more. They knew who was  West goes on: “The interceptors had such a good handle on the transmitting 
characteristics of the German radio operators that they could literally follow them around Europe—wherever 
they were. That was extraordinarily valuable in constructing an order of battle, which is a diagram of what the 
individual military units in the field are doing and what their location is. If a particular radio operator was with a 
particular unit and transmitting from Florence, and then three weeks later you recognized that same operator, 
only this time he was in Linz, then you could assume that that particular unit had moved from northern Italy to 
the eastern front. Or you would know that a particular operator was with a tank repair unit and he always came 
up on the air every day at twelve o’clock. But now, after a big battle, he’s coming up at twelve, four in the 
afternoon, and seven in the evening, so you can assume that unit has a lot of work going on. And in a moment 
of crisis, when someone very high up asks, ‘Can you really be absolutely certain that this particular Luftwaffe  
[German air force squadron] is outside of Tobruk and not in Italy?’ you can answer, ‘Yes, that was 
Oscar, we are absolutely sure.’” 

The key thing about fists is that they emerge naturally. Radio operators don’t deliberately try to sound 
distinctive. They simply end up sounding distinctive, because some part of their personality appears to express 
itself automatically and unconsciously in the way they work the Morse code keys. The other thing about a fist is 
that it reveals itself in even the smallest sample of Morse code. We have to listen to only a few characters to 
pick out an individual’s pattern. It doesn’t change or disappear for stretches or show up only in certain words or 
phrases. That’s why the British interceptors could listen to just a few bursts and say, with absolute certainty, 
“It’s Oscar, which means that yes, his unit is now definitely outside of Tobruk.” An operator’s fist is stable. 

What Gottman is saying is that a relationship between two people has a fist as well: a distinctive signature 
that arises naturally and automatically. That is why a marriage can be read and decoded so easily, because some 
key part of human activity—whether it is something as simple as pounding out a Morse code message or as 
complex as being married to someone—has an identifiable and stable pattern. Predicting divorce, like tracking 
Morse Code operators, is pattern recognition.  

---snip---

N8UX