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

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

Jim Kreuzer's email bounces.

Please advise.

DR

On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 12:23 AM Bart Lee <bart.lee.k6vk at gmail.com> wrote:

> David,  AWA has an aluminum disk recording of the NBC broadcast about
> Charles Apgar from 1934(?).  I think we at CHRS got a cassette tape from
> AWA and duplicated it. The best source would be AWA (Jim K). There are two
> *circa* 1915 Morse code audio excerpts within the interview of Apgar. The
> second bit of Morse is a weather report -- or maybe a coded broadcast to a
> German submarine (it's always a "wilderness of mirrors").
>
> Apgar made disk recordings of the Atlantic area spark Morse code traffic
> he could hear from New Jersey. Those disks are lost in the mists of time,
> but the NBC interview saved two messages. (I sought the disks from the
> Smithsonian but they didn't have them or couldn't find them...)
>
> 73 de Bart, K6VK ##
> -- --
>
> Bart Lee, (Attorney at Law, Retired), FCC amateur extra class license
> K6VK, FCC General Radio Operator's License with Radar,  CHRS Fellow
> ("Doc" Herrold Awarded) and (late) Archivist, AWA Fellow (twice Houck
> Awarded), ARRL Liaison (ARRL Emergency Communications Commendation re 9/11)
>
> Texts only to: 415 902 7168
>
> www.bartlee.com
>
> {Bart(dot)Lee(dot)K6VK(at)gmail(dot)com}
> <http://www.lawforhams.com/>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2024 at 12:54 PM D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea at arrl.net> wrote:
>
>> 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.)
>>
>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/attachments/20240725/fbd21151/attachment.html>