[CW] Spark Recording Recreation by SOWP

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

There is a beautiful recording by the SOWP honoring RJ Richard Johnstone
the first president of the SOWP of a recreation of the "old spark days of
the 1910-1920 era done in 1970.

http://radiomarine.org/audio/download/43

Listen to the beautiful sending - this was done with hand keys (hand pumps)
on a spark transmitter and received on a spark receiver.  Remember that the
regenerating oscillating detector had not yet been invented in 1916 so the
types of receivers were a type of coherer, a type of rectifying device such
as a piece of galena crystal and a cat's whisker point contact, a magnetic
or chemical detector.  No electronics were used in radio at that time.  But
this would change very soon with continuous wave development from the early
CW machines that were high speed electric alternators to now the electronic
oscillators produced by evacuated glass bulbs with three elements - triodes
- which could produce and also amplify radio oscillations and produce an
output of continuous wave.  The problem with continuous wave was that
current detectors were unable to detect it for aural decoding (by ear) as
the CW signal had no modulation like spark did..

http://radiomarine.org/audio/download/43

Dick Johnstone, SS Topika/WGY calls KPM which I believe was the medium
frequency call sign of KPH.
Dick Johnstone was operator at KPH in 1914-17.

Frank Geisel is the operator of Tenu Maru / JTY calls KPH and sends traffic
on 600 meters (500 kc/s or 500 kHz) while WGY is sending traffic to KPM.
 Later Frank is the operator of KHK Honolulu.

Earl Willard (unsure of this name) is the operator on VRE "Nile".

In this recording made in 1970 and 1985 we hear giants of the early radio
days recreate the sounds and the procedures of the time when spark was
king.  Thorn Mays, Commander Frank Johnstone and Frank Geisel all appear on
this narrated recording.  Get out your mill and copy along.   Special
thanks to Gregory DeMascio, sound engineer at KWMR, for his help with this
recording.

David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA <http://www.qsl.net/n1ea/>
SOWP <http://www.sowp.org/>, VWOA <http://www.vwoa.org/>,
OOTC<http://www.ootc.us/>
, FISTS <http://www.fists.co.uk/>, CW-Ops <http://www.cwops.org/>,
CFO<http://groups.google.com/group/Chicken-Fat-Operators-Club?hl=en>
, A1-OP <http://www.arrl.org/a-1-op>, ex-FOC 1271 ARRL-LM<http://www.arrl.org/>
Chat Skype: djringjr MSN: djringjr at msn.com AIM: N1EA icq: 27380609
Radio-Officers Google Group<http://groups.google.com/group/radio-officers?hl=en>
 -- Marine Morse Historic Recordings Page <http://www.qsl.net/n1ea/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/attachments/20111212/843f307f/attachment.html