[CW] High Speed Morse Claims

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

These claims I always found difficult to believe but they came from
reliable sources, but they were all suitably embellished, like Ted
McElroy drinking a half pint of gin then letting the code test begin,
let it finish then when it was over in 5 minutes, type like a windmill
on the manual typewriter at maybe 160 WPM for two minutes or so to
type the 72 WPM record that he was certified at.  My friend who was
Amateur code champ at Brockton, MA fair was certified at 55 WPM while
Ted at this exhibit did 60 WPM.  My friend made no embellished claim
about having a pint of whiskey to settle his nerves, oe anything like
that, nor did he tell me if the Brockton, MA test was for 5 minutes or
for only 1 minute. I do remember his telling me that he was school
typing champion at 130 WPM and that the Morse test was done at the old
standard of six letters to the word instead of the current 5 letters
to the word.  I guess this was the "Pre PARIS Morse word standard" - I
had details about when this happened but I don't have access to any
reference material on this, but Wikipedia says 1865 in Paris was the
date "baud" was defined - 50 baud for the standard word "PARIS"-

 McElroy showed a demonstration of receiving 77 words per minute in
1935. He received a letter by the Cape Cod Radio Club attesting to
this fact. The Club initially checked his speed with the 18-dot
standard and recorded his speed at 90 words per minute. When the
21-dot standard is applied then his speed is computed to be 77 words
per minute (18/21 times 90 wpm = 77 wpm). McElroy showed a speed of 75
words per minute in the Boston "World of Tomorrow" exhibition on 16
November 1938, although it is not counted as an official contest.

Kane, Joseph Nathan (1997). Famous First Facts, Fifth Edition. The H.
W. Wilson Company. ISBN 0-8242-0930-3. The first radio receiver to
record a speed of more than 50 words per minute was Theodore R.
McElroy, telegraph operator for the Boston Herald. On May 7, 1922, at
the Boston Radio Show, he typed for three minutes at a speed of 51.5
words per minute without making a mistake. On May 24 he was a
contestant at the New York Radio Show at the 71st Regiment Armory,
where he typed perfect copy for two minutes at 50.5 words per minute.
He won a silver cup inscribed "Presented to the Champion Radio Code
Operator of the World.

From: https://www.radiomuseum.org/dsp_hersteller_detail.cfm?company_id=10933
Something about McElroy from Tom French's publication: "Theodore R.
McElroy -- Ted, or T.R., or Mac (he hated his given name) -- was born
in September 1904. He began his telegraphic career at age 14, as a
Western Union messenger, and within a year he was a telegraph
operator. By age 21 he was winning code receiving contests and setting
records. He set the all-time, still-unbroken official record of 75.2
words per minute in 1939 (corrected to today's 25-dot word standard,
that would be 72.2 wpm). McElroy began manufacturing telegraph keys
(his "Mac-Key") in late 1934. By 1941 he had put out about twenty
variations of his semi-automatic key, and several variations of
straight (hand) keys. There were also code practice oscillators, inked
tape keyers and, for the military during WWII, many automatic Morse
devices and code training equipment. Mac made millions of dollars
during the war, but when demand shrivelled after the war, he lost most
of it. In 1955 he sold his company (by then located in Littleton,
Mass.). He continued to work for it for a while, then for other
electronics companies. He gave code demonstrations, and became
interested in local politics. McElroy died in November 1963. Hand
keys, also called straight keys, were made by T.R. McElroy from 1937
to 1943. During the war, McElroy was busy making equipment for the
Signal Corps, and key production was taken over by Telegraph Apparatus
Company of Chicago (McElroy was a partner in T.A.C.)." For the season
1941/42 the Allied catalog for 1942 shows on page 136 quite a few of
the popular transmitting keys.

My friend Allison Rufus Macomber, W1DDB (sk 1980) said he was amateur
speed champion at Brockton, MA state fair at 50 WPM (60 WPM  under the
new 50 baud standard) and Ted W1JYN was 60 WPM which under the new
standard would become 72 WPM which is 1.2 times faster.).  Of
everything I've heard, W1DDB's information on the speed conversion
makes the most sense but even that is cloudy with uncertainty. Why
were they measuring with 6 letters per word?  PARIS had long ago been
defined as the standard word at 50 baud, or was it because of the
change of word spacing by deleting the double space (14 baud in length
down to 7 baud in length) the only change?  I get confused.

73

DR