[CW] WCC Early CW History - LCM in Stavanger, Norway

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

Interesting exchange about the early days of Continuous Wave and the
final days of Spark.

My email to Dr. Ed Moxon, K1GGI who recently gave a Zoom talk on the
early days of WCC/WIM and RCA.

Hello Ed,

What an excellent presentation you did, and an amazing amount of work
to produce that.  Congratulations

I tried to send this message (twice) before and during the Question
and Answer period but something came up saying it had been answered,
perhaps it was too technical, but I'm still interested in any answer
you have.

The only mention of LCM in Stavanger, Norway that I've ever seen is in
a 1976 letter from Dr. H.H. Beverage to Thorn L. Mayes, in it he
mentions that it was like WII in New Brunswick / Belmar, NJ was "timed
spark" which was near continuous wave in quality.  WII and MUU,
Carnarvon, England were both converted to Alexanderson Alternators as
was Marion, MA WSO.  Do you have more information about LCM Stavenger?

I have a particular interest in Stavanger because that was the
location of the last CONSOL navigation station which was a LF radio
signal that you counted pulses and the transmitting antennas were
rotated in phase and from the double pulse at 0 seconds or North, you
could count the number of pulses until the signal disappeared, you'd
have to put the receiver to AGC/AVC off to get it to work. I used it
several times when in the Eastern North Atlantic, I understand that
Nantucket Light Ship TUK had a console setup also but by 1975 it had
been dismantled.

73
David N1EA

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ed Moxon <emoxon at alum.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, Jun 30, 2021 at 9:39 AM
Subject: RE: LCM in Stavanger, Norway
To: D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea at arrl.net>


Hello David,

My sincere apologies for the delay in replying, Outlook diverted your
message away from my inbox and I just came upon it today.

Thank you for the kind words.

I hope my answer is sufficient.

The Chatham/Norway era is greatly misunderstood and widely misrepresented.

There are a few tidbits about LCM, some in the literature and some in our
Chatham Superintendents Diary.

"Norway" is more frequently referred to than "LCM".

After the prospects for New Jersey/UK made a big splash in 1912, the
literature speaks of a station in Massachusetts or Connecticut to
communicate with Norway. (I think Norway was eager to have a station, and
American Marconi needed to come up with some QTH stateside). There are
articles about the Norwegian Storthing ratifying a contract with British
Marconi for constructing their station.

In the 1914 annual report, the American Marconi directors warned the
stockholders that progress both in the US and Norway was stymied by the war
(attachment).

The Stavanger/Naerboe station is outlined in Bucher along with CM/MN as
"Circuit #3" (but without callsigns, since they didn't yet exist). (E.E.
Bucher, Practical Wireless Telegraphy, 1917). Note - there were two 1917
editions, and the first one got Stavanger and Naerboe backwards.

Bucher says Marion would have timed-spark "within a very short time" and
Norway would be a duplicate, so Stavanger should be timed spark. Bucher
details the theory of timed-spark. A Gernsback magazine from Sept 1919 lists
LCM under "undamped" stations. We have word-of-mouth from our own Frank
Kremp via Bill Ryder that they never got Marion timed-spark working in 1919,
and Young testified to congress that it was removed by RCA and had never
worked successfully - we have that in our 1920 exhibit. Hugh Aitken
pronounced that spark in any form is not CW (The Continuous Wave), and
Hooper pointed out that Marconi was desperate to get the alternator, else
give up, unable to compete. They gave up.

In the summer of 1919, even as negotiations with British Marconi for buying
out American Marconi were underway, Chatham was copying the LCM and NSS
traffic (Supt's diary). The Navy was still handling all radio business, but
a Marconi contingent at CM/MN was fully expecting to be in business soon,
and was gearing up and practicing.

In 1919, the Norwegian-American Chamber of Commerce did a piece in their
Bulletin on how traffic to-and-from Norway was handled by the Navy via
NSS/OtterCliffs (attachment). Stavanger had been completed, and although the
piece doesn't describe the transmitted signal, I think we know what it was.
Note that this issue is dated December 1919, and speaks of Marconi, but RCA
was IN and Marconi was OUT as of November. Later, it would be March '20
before Wilson ceded radio back to private enterprise.

Our own Forrest Robinson (RN) wrote some reminiscences about LCM and OUI in
the '20s, in our archives.

Two personal notes:

1) Several years ago, I looked up the NRRL on the internet and had some
correspondence looking for info, but it yielded nothing illuminating.

2) Somewhere there is an early piece about a YL ham who was copying LCM, and
lived on Maple St in Manchester NH. I lived on Maple St in Manchester NH in
the '40s/'50s, perhaps within a half mile, and had never heard of the early
station of Miss Smith until the internet came along.

Enter a few keywords in Google Books or Chronicling America and wade through
it - that's what I do :)

I was not familiar with Consol, thanks for that info.

73,
Ed
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