[CW] 175 Years Ago Today

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

=hris NW6V sent me a recording of his doing 25 wpm on a straight key.

The recording is at:
http://qsl.net/n1ea/vail3june1844.mp3a

Chris won the RadioSport Gold Medal in 2016 for sending with a
straight key.  He has been clocked at 30+ WPM on his Marconi 213
replica made by Alberto I1QOD.

You want to read interesting?  Read his QRZ page: https://www.qrz.com/db/nw6v

>From  Chris NW6V

I made a recording today. Equipment was my phone lying next to a
powered speaker hooked up to my K3, playing the sidetone. Key was my
Marconi 213 Replica by Frattini.

The text is from a letter written 175 years ago today by Albert Vail
to Morse, describing the enthralled crowds that lined up to see the
telegraph a week following the initial sending of "What Hath God
Wrought," a week earlier on May 24. Of course 100% of what those
crowds were lined up to see as Morse's telegraph was of Vail's
invention and design, but I digress... In any event, the code is
mostly good but for a shaky "w" near the end when I broke
concentration - started thinking about sending the date at the very
end - which I had tripped over on several previous attempts to record
this for you. :-) The excerpt is as follows:

"Everything went well last week and such an excitement has never
occurred before in relation to any new thing brought before the
public. Hundreds begged and pleaded to be allowed merely to look at
the instrument. They declared they would not say a word or stir and
didn’t care whether they understood or not, only they wanted to say
they had seen it.” Albert Vail,  June 3, 1844

I love this quote; the public was blown away... bear in mind that some
people thought it was all a magician's trick, a fraud; others that it
was blasphemous. But for most is was a living miracle as for the first
time the power of the gods - lighting - was being controlled by the
hand of man - with sparks to prove it. It was quite the event in their
lives...

73
Chris NW6V