[Elecraft] start with straight key or paddles?

[Hisashi T Fujinaka]

On Fri, 20 May 2005, Mike Morrow wrote:

> I wrote:
>
>> Thank goodness for iambic mode A.  I never understood how mode B,
>> the result of a logic design error in an early (1960s) electronic keyer
>> design, caught on.
>
> Bill wrote:
>
>> I built a Mini-MOS key (from a 73 magazine article) back in 1979. It
>> has dot and dash memories -- the quality that gives it Mode B. It
>> takes extra circuitry to do this -- it's not just a "logic design
>> error".
>
> And Dan wrote:
>
>> I had a Heathkit keyer on which I learned iambic, and it was all
>> discrete logic gates and RC circuits. No ICs. It did exactly what
>> the schematic said it would do. No error there.
>
> True, mode B did catch on (long before 1979) and circuits and chips were purposely designed to implement it.  But the evil that spawned mode B occurred in an improperly designed keyer from the mid-1960s.  Somewhere I've specific details...but not with me now.

Not quite an answer but the ARRL article on John Curtis said,
"(according to John, Mode B was actually a design error by an unnamed
company)."

http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2002/02/04/2/?nc=1

-- 
Hisashi T Fujinaka - htodd at twofifty.com
BSEE(6/86) + BSChem(3/95) + BAEnglish(8/95) + MSCS(8/03) + $2.50 = latte