[CW] 1915 New York Herald Radio WHB PX (Spark)

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

Anyone have this recording?

73

David Ring N1EA

Only one or possibly two recordings of the Morse code spark signals of a
press broadcast are known to exist. The California Historical Radio Society
distributed a 1915 audio recording of a wireless telegraphy press message
to ships at sea from the New York Herald station WHB. The late Jim Maxwell,
W6CF, (then W6CFC) commented on it: “Copying WHB as Recorded by Charles
Apgar, 2MN, in 1915; by James A. Maxwell, W6CFC, Redwood Estates, CA. “The
latest CHRS tape, Vol. 13 No.1, is a very interesting tape. The
transcriptions were not all that easy to understand at times, but
considering their age and the state of recording technology 50 to 70 years
back, they are in remarkably good condition. “Here’s the text of the WHB
transmission: MNY K BT INVESTIGATION SHOWS MISSING BANK CLERK HENRY BRADLEY
MERCHANTS NATL BANK SHORT HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND PLAYED RACES PLUNGED STOX
“Note: 1. This Morse was hand sent. 2. The recoding starts in the middle of
a transmission. It isn’t clear what was going on prior to the BT (pause).
MNY is a common abbreviation for ‘many’ and K is an invitation to transmit.
It is possible that this represents a fragment of a conversation between
the operators prior to going on with the news. The entire transmission
seems somewhat informal - note the use of the abbreviation NATL for
National, and STOX probably for STOCKS. 3. In the word MERCHANTS the two
letters CH were sent using the Morse sequence ‘----’ (four dashes). This is
not commonly used these days except among Spanish speaking operators. 4.
The word PLUNGED is actually somewhat ambiguous. The manual sending was
good throughout, with a slight swing, but easy to copy. But when the letter
G was followed by a very brief hesitation and either a long dot (E) or a
short dash (T). The possibilities are thus GE, GT, Q or Z, resulting in the
four possible words PLUNGED, PLUNGTD, PLUNGD, or PLUNZD. Only PLUNGED makes
and sense here, referring to 'Plunging' (investing heavily) into the stock
market or stocks plunging in value. 5. There was another character
following STOX, but it faded into the noise at the end of the transmission.
“ “Overall, It seems as if a report was being given of a missing bank clerk
who had been playing the races and the stock market. Too bad we don't have
more information on it. Someone with access to back issues of the New York
Times (the SF Public Library has them going many years back on microfilm)
could probably put together a very interesting story.” (From the Journal of
the California Historical Radio Society. The correct callsign WHB is
emended. The audio recording comes from the archives of the Antique
Wireless Association in New York, part of an NBC 1934 interview with
Charles Apgar.)
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