[GreenKeys] Re: Seattle Western Union History

[Doug Alderdice]

At 06:27 PM 3/18/2008 -0700, Richard Schumann wrote:
>Anybody know the circumstances under which American Morse was phased out 
>for the Morse we are familiar with today, and how Teletype figured in to 
>all this?  Maybe some kind of website with a timeline showing how the 
>different methods overlapped?  There must have been some real conflicts 
>among those who resisted change.

International Morse, with which we are familiar from the airwaves, is a 
slight modification of the "Continental" Code, developed in Europe for use 
on the landline telegraphs there.  I believe it was a German by the name of 
Gerke, quite early on, who didn't like the idea of the spaces within the 
characters as you find in American Morse (e.g. "C" in American is "..  .", 
"O" is ".  .", etc.), as well as having three different dash lengths ("T", 
"L" and zero, in increasing length).  Declaring American Morse 
"unsuitable," he developed the Continental Code which has a uniform dash 
length and no spaces within the character elements.  It is interesting to 
note that the non-English origin of the Continental Code can be seen in the 
coding of the letter "O" (three dashes) making a fairly long character, as 
opposed to Morse's original two spaced dots.  The letter "O" is not used as 
frequently in German as it is in English.  When Morse developed his code he 
sent his assistant to study type boxes in the local printer's office to do 
a study on which letters were used more than others and coded them 
appropriately, hence the "E" with the single dot.  Gerke apparently did 
something similar, except it was the German usage of the letters.

But, I digress.  The two codes existed concurrently almost from the 
beginning of wired telegraphy, Continental in Europe and places like Oz and 
American Morse in North America.  I don't recall which code was used on the 
trans-oceanic line, probably Continental.  With the advent of radio, er, 
"wireless" in those days, at some point it was determined that the 
Continental Code with its no-spaces-within-the-elements characters and 
uniform dash length was better suited to use on the airwaves where static 
and other QRM is to be found in great quantities, especially with the early 
spark gear.  As American Morse ops can tell you, there are certain 
character patterns that can be interpreted different ways, and you need to 
be cognizant of what you are copying as the context can make a big 
difference in what you copy down.

As an earlier poster noted, there are folks who can do both codes quite 
readily.  I am not one of them, sad to say.  I do live telegraph displays 
locally a couple of times a year but I use International... and get caught 
out by the occasional retired railroader who knows the difference!

73,

Doug, KA2WFT
http://mysite.verizon.net/dalderdi/telegrph/