[GreenKeys] HAPPY BIRTHDAY RTTY!!!

[Jack]

ZCZC

Sometime in late 1946, the first Amateur Radio RTTY 
contact was made in the New York City area (on VHF...lowband
FSK was not allowed until the early 50's, and then it
was only 850 HZ shift...prior to that, only make-and-break keying
was allowed on the lowbands).

In October of 1946, the first Amateur Radioteletype
Society Bulletin was published by John Williams, W2BFD,
who has been credited with being the "father of Ham RTTY".

W2BFD was the first Ham to be able to convince commercial
Teletype users to release their old machines to
Hams. The first machines that became available were the
venerable Teletype Model 12's, followed by 
Model 26 and Model 15 machines. The Teletype 21A was also
a popular machine, but, being a parallel-input
tape printer, it took a lot of work to get it
going. W2BFD also published probably the first Ham
RTTY TU article and his TU became the standard for
the early RTTY pioneers.

The "Amateur Radioteletype Society" (ARS) eventually
became the "Amateur Radio Teletype Society" (ARTS).
When RTTY caught on on the west coast, the famous 
west coast "RTTY Bulletin" rivaled the
ARTS publication for years. 

Ham RTTY got a lot of exposure through Wayne Green's (W2NSD)
involvement with CQ magazine. Wayne was amongst the first
NY-based RTTY'ers. Eventually Byron Kretzman, W2JTP,
took over the RTTY column in CQ. Byron's rallying
cry was "RTTY'ers Build!" since there was hardly
any commercially-available Ham RTTY equipment in those
days. QST was a little more selective with RTTY articles, 
but there were some good ones in QST over the years, including
Irv Hoff's (W6FFC) Mainline RTTY articles. The real "source"
for RTTY developments and construction articles was the
RTTY Bulletin. 

Happy Birthday to Ham RTTY, 60 years old!

73,

Jack WA2HWJ

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