[Elecraft] Morse on the Tonight Show, Tonight, Friday the 13th

Sat May 14 16:44:33 EDT 2005

You guys are missing something in the timing. Sending an SMS message  
requires far more than just keying in the receiver's phone number and  
the text itself. Once all this is keyed in and the send button is  
pressed, the cell system takes over. Much like the email system we  
are now using, the SMS message is forwarded into the  SMS gateway,  
which is most likely located at some central point in the cellphone  
company's system. There are amazingly few of these due to the vast  
amount of bandwidth inside the phone companies. The next time the  
system services outgoing messages, the server will start checking for  
delivery parameters, such as if the receiving phone is available and  
ready to accept a message. When all these gates have been cleared,  
the message is forwarded to the receiver. Only then does the message  
come up for display. This can happen quickly (hundreds of  
milliseconds), or rather slowly (minutes or more) depending on the  
loading of the SMS system and the overall cell system.

Note that this is very much unlike the CW system which is very much  
point-to-point.

So, even if the sender could key in the information as fast as the CW  
guys, it is doubtful if the SMS system could get the job done  
quickly. As are emails, SMS messaging is anything but a real-time  
system.

It still feels great to see the guys smoke the phone kids, though...

On May 14, 2005, at 1:04 PM, EricJ wrote:

> I posted the math here based on the Guinness sentence that the text
> messenger had to send for his world record, but I'm too lazy to  
> look for it
> now. The official text is 160 characters INCLUDING spaces, 136  
> without. But
> SMS requires that spaces be keyed in where Morse does not. So SMS  
> is at a
> throughput disadvantage from the beginning.
>
> Ben Cook set the text messenger record with 160 characters in 57.75  
> seconds.
> That works out to 29 wpm (5.5 wpm) for 160 characters or about 24 wpm
> without. Actually quite unbelievably fast for anyone who has  
> entered an
> address or note on their cell phone. So to beat him, it only required
> sending Morse at >24 wpm. My guess is Chip was sending at better  
> than 25,
> but less than 30 wpm.
>
> It doesn't so much speak to the efficiency of Morse as it speaks to  
> the
> unbearably pathetic human interface that is SMS. However, it takes  
> less than
> 5 minutes to learn SMS, and probably that many days or even weeks  
> to reach a
> comparable speed in Morse. AND, the receiver already has the skills
> necessary to read SMS where Morse requires a trained operator at  
> both ends.
> Not to apologize for Ben Cook, but he probably practiced the  
> Guinness script
> every waking moment before his record attempt. He was seeing the  
> Tonight
> Show text for the first time.
>
> So what do we have?  I'd say 3:06 minutes of light television  
> entertainment.
> That's good enough.
>
> Eric
> KE6US
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: elecraft-bounces+eric_csuf=hotmail.com at mailman.qth.net
> [mailto:elecraft-bounces+eric_csuf=hotmail.com at mailman.qth.net] On  
> Behalf Of
> Kevin Rock
> Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2005 11:27 AM
> To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Morse on the Tonight Show, Tonight, Friday  
> the 13th
>
> I did a little arithmetic to determine the skills necessary for this
> 'competition'.  It appears the text only folks never stood a chance.
>
> Using the standard word PARIS here is the run down.
>
> PARIS * 20 wpm = 100 chars/minute
> 100 chars/60 seconds = 1.67 chars/second
>
> At 27 wpm => 2.25 chars/sec
> At 30 wpm => 2.5 chars/sec.
>
> Having never used text messaging, since cell phones do not work  
> where I
> live, I cannot truly measure the dexterity required to pass this  
> bit of
> traffic.
>
> Since I am a touch typist at a moderate rate of 60 wpm I know I  
> could beat
> most CW ops if given the chance to type the message on a QWERTY  
> keyboard and
> send it via one of the digital modes.  But on a little cellphone's  
> keypad I
> do believe I would be severely hampered by its user interface.
> They are pretty much a two finger input device as far as I can  
> tell.  My dad
> was pretty good at two finger typing (40 wpm) but that method has its
> inherent difficulties.
>
> I don't think this was a valid test of different user interfaces  
> but it
> makes for a fine joke.  Now if those folks using the cellphones  
> would have
> had Wayne's two button (dot/dash) user input device they would have  
> been on
> the same footing.  But even then there would have been the use of  
> repeaters
> and landline circuits to transfer their message.  This would have  
> slowed the
> information exchange by just enough to get themselves smoked by the  
> simplex
> transfer of data by the '817 to '817 connection.
> The contest would have been more fair however.
>
> Imagine if our very own Chicken Fat Operator N0SS had been the  
> keying op?
> The poor cell op would truly have had egg on his face ;)
>
> Long live CW!!
>     73,
>        Kevin.   KD5ONS
>
>
> Should truly be called the "Vail Code" but I digress.
>     KJR
>
>
>
>
>
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