[CW] Question about marine radiograms

Tue Nov 6 15:10:20 EST 2018

You're right, people could either contact Western Union or if they
knew our telephone or telex number, they could send the message for a
ship to us.  Remember the whole telegraph / radio system was upended
around 1988.

When I worked at Tuckerton, NJ Radio / WSC in the 1980s, when a
telegram was received it was sent to the wire room.  We had a big
Rolodex with telex numbers for the shipping companies and shipping
agents, we gathered much of this when delivering a telegram, simply by
asking for contact information.

RCA had national service.  ITT only had four access cities, NY, SFO,
LA and Miami.  TRT had domestic service.
At least for us, and I think it was because WSC was considered as
dealing Internationally with ships as they were in International
waters.  WU had a monopoly on Domestic telegraph traffic, but it was
weakening.  AT&T had TWX which was ASCII instead  of Baudot service by
phone lines using acoustic couplers.

We'd look up the telex number, if it started with 2 it was RCA, so
we'd go to the RCA telex machine, prepare a tape with:

227594+
(Then we'd put a bunch of letters punches in to allow us to wait for
the automatic answer back.

When we started the call, RCA would come back to us:

RCA TELEX
GA

GA means Go Ahead.

We'd feed the tape until it dialed the number, and the tape hit the
letters punches where we'd stop the tape from feeding.

Our machine would come to life and you'd see the automation type:

MOM PLS

Moment, Please.

Then you'd receive the automatic answer back of the telex machine you dialed.

227594 AMVERNYK

Or you would see:

DER

Which means DERANGED, or Out of Order.

If we connected to our party, we'd feed the tape, then at the end
(also has a bunch of LETTERS punches) we'd hit the FIGS D key or WRU
key which is Who aRe yoU asking for the distant machine to identify,
thus proving that we still had a connection and presumably the message
had printed without fault.

We would disconnect from the telegraph circuit by typing ..... five
periods.  If we were going to continue to send traffic, we would send
five commas, ,,,,, which would give us a new prompting and GA from
RCA.

ITT teleprinters started with 4, Western Union Domestic (WUD) started
with 6.  I can't remember the others.

But we'd  also have a number on the WUD machine that we could send a
telegram into the WU system but we rarely did this because we'd have
to pay WU for this, instead we either mailed the radiogram or called
the party by telephone and delivered it ourselves, that way we could
collect the 7-3/4 cents per word for ourselves rather than pay WU that
money.

>From a google search:

The Federal Communications Commission tried in 1979 to take similar
steps to encourage competition among the carriers, but the policy was
blocked by the Federal Court of Appeals in New York. The court held
that the F.C.C. policy was at odds with the regulatory structure that
had been in place since 1943, when Western Union became a domestic
monopoly and was barred from international business.

Since that time, international telex and telegram service has been
handled from this country by RCA Global Communications, ITT World
Communications, the FTC Communications Company, TRT/Telco and Western
Union International, a subsidiary of Xerox. Interconnection Provision

In addition to permitting Western Union to enter the international
telex and cable market, the five international carriers would be
permitted under the House bill to interconnect with Western Union's
vast national telex network. This would permit point-to-point
connections between American cities and overseas points. Under present
policy, the international carriers must deliver overseas messages to
Western Union for relay beyond the five ''gateway'' American cities
where they are now permitted to deliver messages.

This is getting far off the subject of CW, but that's how we delivered
the CW messages we'd receive from ships.

I'm sure I've given you enough to start searching for information
should you wish to.

73

DR
On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 1:13 PM Richard Knoppow <1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>      Thanks for the detective work. What I was curious about is
> how a message from a ship was delivered to its final destination.
> I had not really considered this before but from the few clues I
> have I am guessing the coastal stations sent the messages via WU.
> Probably the same for messages to ships except they could
> probably be filed either with WU or perhaps directly with the
> radio company.
>
> On 11/6/2018 3:59 AM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
> > Hello Richard,
> >
> > I haven't searched for the information to see if it appears on the
> > Internet, but here goes:
> >
> > Western Union was granted a monopoly on domestic telegraphic
> > communications.  They even had two teleprinter networks, WUD Western
> > Union Domestic  and  (WUI) Western Union International.
> >
> > If you had a telegram, it had to go by Western Union.  There were
> > court cases galore.  ITT was granted gateway cities, they could only
> > have teleprinters in USA at gateway cities, I think they were New
> > York, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  From there they had to
> > go Western Union.  Western Union had also telex lines WUD Western
> > Union Domestic and WUI Western Union International.  Memory says WUD
> > numbers began with 6, RCA numbers began with 2, ITT numbers began with
> > 4, then there was French Telegraph Company (FTC).
> >
> > I searched and info predates Internet so it's hard to find.
> >
> > Here's a full list I found on Internet of telex providers, but
> > https://sendtelegram.com/# says they're registered to replace WUD -
> > Western Union which handled USA telegrams.
> >
> > Telex Providers - private telegraph service (automatic direct dialed
> > teleprinter)
> > USA
> > (FTCC)
> > (GRAPHNET)
> > (ITT)
> > (RCA)
> > (TRT)
> > (TWX)
> > (WUD)
> > (WUC)
> > (WUI)
> >
> > This is enough to get you started.  Western Union as it once was is no
> > more, someone bought them mainly for their bank wire services.
> >
> > 73
> > DR
> >
>
> --
> Richard Knoppow
> 1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
> WB6KBL
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> =30=