[CW] WPM

[DANNY DOUGLAS]

I did a US government study on exactly that, back in the 60s, and came up with the word PARIS as the standard, because it equaled the dot spaces necessary to equal the average of ALL letters in our western alphabet-- spent quite a deal of time doing it, only to find out later, after it had been accepted, that it had been done decades earlier (no computer to search  - hi ).  We were using 5 letter code groups, and a Z was just as likely to come up in the group, as was an E or a T, so we needed to have a true average.  If you are talking about plain text, you would find the WPM a bit faster, because you have E T A I O N S for instance, much more than you would have X Y Z etc, which are longer characters.    We had been sending on-air code training as something of an older standard, and when I got to listening, it was actually sending slower than the required speeds, and that is what got me into checking for a true standard.    I got a nice commendation, a bit of cash, and even a boost in my promotion (more cash) for that. 

 I've forgotten the actual formula I used, but you can do it by counting the dot spaces in every letter of the alphabet, adding them together, adding the spaces and dividing by 6, to get the average length of each 5 letter code group (and its following space).  Then, playing around to figure out a word that equaled that same length, I found that PARIS fit the bill.  That was the hard part.  Today, some smarty could do it in seconds on a computer, I imagine.  


Danny Douglas
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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: D.J.J. Ring, Jr. 
  To: CW Reflector 
  Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 4:42 PM
  Subject: [CW] WPM


  What is the standard for Words Per Minute in Morse?  PARIS including the word space, or 25 dots and intercharacter spaces.  The ITU settled on a number of 50 baud where baud was the fundamental transmission element which is the shortest time element in the transmission.  This in Morse code is equal to the length of the dot, and the length of the dot is also equal to the length of the space between characters, which is called the "Intercharacter space".  A word space is seven baud.  Since a sent dot requires a dot space, a string of twenty five dots has twenty five intercharacter spaces and is equal to 50 baud.


  PARIS happened to have 50 code elements in the word.  It also helped that the organization that did the telegraphic standards was headed at this time in Paris, France.  The ITU was founded on 17 May 1865 when the first International Telegraph Convention was signed in Paris by the 20 founding members, and the International Telegraph Union (ITU) was established.


  50 code elements = 50 baud = 25 dots and intercharacter spaces.



  73

  David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA
  SOWP, VWOA, OOTC, FISTS, CW-Ops, JARL-A1, A1-OP, ex-FOC 1271 ARRL-LM Chat Skype: djringjr MSN: djringjr at msn.com AIM: N1EA icq: 27380609

  Radio-Officers Google Group -- Marine Morse Historic Recordings Page 





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