[CW] American Morse Illegal on the Ham Bands?

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "D.J.J. Ring, Jr." <n1ea at arrl.net>
To: <g0clv at dsl.pipex.com>; "CW Reflector l" 
<cw at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: [CW] American Morse Illegal on the Ham Bands?


> If I remember correctly, at the time what came to be 
> International Morse
> code was called "Continental Morse Code" and was used on 
> International
> cables and landlines in Europe.
>
> The letter S is identical in American and Continental 
> Code.
>
> The character for period early on was .. .. .. that is 
> dot-dot
> dot-dot dot-dot which if you weren't familiar with that 
> character, you
> might write down, III, but it was really just . (period).
>
> I remember somewhere in the Society of Wireless Pioneers 
> "Sparks Journal"
> there is a great story by Donald De Neuf about his sending 
> a telegram to a
> station in Japan who did not know what III was when he 
> copied the message,
> so it was sent to the home shipping company office as III 
> which puzzled
> them!
>
> 73
> David N1EA

     I have to do some research on this.  III or .. .. .. 
was the combination for a period or stop until some time 
around the mid 1930s when it was changed to the familiar 
.-.-.-   I used to know the exact date but have forgotten 
it.  Some handbooks, for instance the mostly reliable 
_Reference Data for Radio Engineers_ continued to show .. .. 
.. for a couple of decades after it was changed.
     Continental code was used on European land lines before 
cable use but American Morse can't be used on cables that 
use polarity reversal because there is no way of reproducing 
the varying lengths of dashes or accounting for varying 
spaces.  American Morse has three lengths of dashes, T, L 
and zero and  different spacing as in I and O.
     The new symbol for the period was the one previously 
used for comma and comma was changed to the symbol used for 
exclamation point, which was dropped altogether.  So you 
can't be surprised in Continental/International code.
     A few symbols or conventions from American Morse 
remain, such as ES for & (ampersand) and the numeral codes 
73, 88, and 30 although 30 has now become SK    I think we 
had some discussion about the origin of 73. I thought it 
originated with the Philips code but evidently it predated 
that.  I have no idea where 88 for "love and kisses" came 
from, I can't find it in any of the old reference books.
     Anyway, 73 and -30-  (what old time radio news man 
ended with "...and that's thirty for tonight"?)


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