[CW] American Morse Illegal on the Ham Bands?

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "D.J.J. Ring, Jr." <n1ea at arrl.net>
To: "CW Reflector" <cw at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: [CW] American Morse Illegal on the Ham Bands?


>I used to QSO with a fellow who used American Morse, he had 
>a diode in
> series with his loud speaker and a capacitor across that 
> to ground and fed
> a Morse sounder.  I know the MTC (Morse Telegraph Club) 
> has better
> schematics than his but it worked when the noise wasn't 
> too bad.
>
> He told me "clicks" for American and "sound" for 
> International Morse - he
> kept them separate that way, but the early Radio Officers 
> on ships had to
> use American Morse on spark when contacting US and 
> Canadian stations - or I
> guess they "could" use American if they wanted, but the US 
> and Canadian
> stations had to use International with non US/Canadian 
> ships.  Eventually
> all of radio went International code.
>
> I often wonder (I can now blame a few sleepless nights on 
> it, even though
> it isn't true) if early Amateur stations used American 
> Morse.
>
> That was the code in use in USA so it seems that it must 
> have been the rule
> rather than the exception.
>
> Anyone here up on that history?
>
> David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA <http://www.qsl.net/n1ea/>
> *Gopher Hole:*  gopher://sdf.org/1/users/djringjr/ (native 
> or with
> Firefox's Overbite extension) or via http to gopher
> gateway<http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://sdf.org/1/users/djringjr/>
>
> =30=

     Now, since Marconi was European what kind of code did 
he use?   Continental or International code was adopted in 
Europe long before wireless and was universal for cable use. 
Morse or Vail code seems to have been used mostly in the 
U.S. and Canada.  One of the wireless history books I've 
been reading has a date for the adoption of Continental code 
for wireless but I can't remember it.
     Also remember the U.S.Navy had its own short lived 
code, there may have been others.
     I am another who taught myself American Morse and used 
to correspond with an old time railroad operator who was a 
ham. It was fun but I can't do it any more.   I have a 
couple of sounders and set one up with an Instructograph. 
What a noise!  Reading from a sounder is completely 
different from reading tone.  Made my ears ring.


--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk at ix.netcom.com