[GreenKeys] Fwd: Re: 30 Question

[Don Robert House]

My thanks to Ben for this information...

>From: K9kom@aol.com
>Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 11:52:03 EDT
>Subject: Re: Question
>To: drhouse@nadcomm.com
>
>In the early days of land line Morse telegraphy, using the American 
>Morse code sounders, they had a shorthand number system, kind of 
>like the Q signals used in radiotelegraphy today.  I could never 
>copy American Morse nor the clicks of the sounder, but I have seen 
>their number code and 30 was the end of message signal.
>
>Journalists of the time, to whom telegraphy was a Godsend, commenced 
>adding 30 to the end of their story when they would file it at the 
>telegraph office for transmission to their home newspaper, and I 
>believe this custom of signifying the end of a story by the number 
>30 continued for many years after land line morse telegraphy was 
>gone.
>
>On Teletype circuits, a message filed by a journalist could and 
>probably did have the number 30 at the end of the story, which the 
>operator would have included.  Whether or not that became routine 
>with Teletype messages I do not know.    In current International 
>Morse radiotelegraphy we use AR run together as the end of message 
>signal.  We use BT run together as a break, and I have seen BT typed 
>as such as recently as Donald Rumsfeld's general broadcast to the 
>services before the current Iraq war.   That message also used the 
>military NNNN signal as the end of message.  Some multipoint private 
>line Model 28's had the stunt box loaded to detect NNNN as the end 
>of message and go back to the nonprint mode.
>
>Forty years or so ago there was a movie about journalists (The 
>Philadelphia Story?) which, in the final frame, then "The End" would 
>have been expected, they instead used "Thirty".  So it was still 
>standard journalism practice then.  I would expect that now, with 
>everything on computers and The Internet, the use of 30 would be 
>gone.=
>
>Ben Stephens K9KOM=
>AR