[GreenKeys] Tape Relay Equipment

[gil at baudot.net]

Forwarding for Dave -- gil
--------------------------


Subject: Tape Relay Equipment
From:NNN7DXB at aol.com(Add as Preferred Sender) 
Date:Sat, May 17, 2008 10:02 amTo:greenKeys at mailman.qth.net
Hello Jim and Bob:
 
 Bob, thought I'd address this to the entire group, since Jim has
contributed
 some replies as well, separately, in regard to the Tape Relay items you
have.
 
 It occured to me that the unit you (Bob) may have might/might not be
late WW II
 or post war. Here is why: The Army-Navy ("AN/") system didn't come
 into being until after the war. Prior to, and during most of WW II, the
 Army and Navy generally used the commercial model numbers, and 
 didn't have nomenclatures of their own for their equipment. Of course,
 much WW II comm gear was, of necessity, commercial, off-the-shelf
 stuff, rather than a standard military model. So, I am wondering if
there
 is a model number on that AN/TGC-1, or how it was nomenclatured
 as such. The AN/ system was designed more or less for the logistics
 and procurement folks for the Army and the Navy, and each service
 sometimes went its own way in further nomenclaturing its equipment
 beyond all reasonable recognition sometimes. During the WW II years,
 the Air Force wasn't a consideration, since it was still just a branch 
 of the Army, and had not yet become a separate service until itself.
 However, the Air Force eventually adopted the AN/ sysetm as well,
 and it's still in use today. The newest piece of AN/ equipment today:
 AN/TYC-245, tactical DMS automatic switching center.....replacing
 the older AN/TYC-39 AUTODIN switches, and replacing all of the earlier
MGC,
 TSC, an MSC equipment (teletype-based) in their entirety.
 
 
 For an interesting tutorial on what all these AN/ numbers mean, visit
 this site:
 
 http://www.gordon.army.mil/ocos/Museum/an.asp
 
 This is a part of the US Army Signal Museum at Fort Gordon, VA.
 Unfortunately, they have a PhD "historian" who works there, but so
 far, he doesn't know squat about anything, so has been of no help
 whatsoever, in spite of my emails to him for any information regarding
 any tape relay gear. I assume the "museum" doesn't have any (even
 though Fort Gordon Signal School had tons of it in the 60s). I was
 disappointed in the Army Signal Museum -- so far.
 
 I will see if the Navy has a Signal museum. Go to do some web
surfing....
 
 For Bob: You should also know that your machine most likely "might"
 be a former Navy machine. The USN was the leader in the very early
 days of WW II in the torn tape business. The Army didn't learn this
process
 until sometime after the war had started, and instead, relied heavily
 on point-to-point and TWX teletype service (and on commercial carriers)
 for much of their record message comms. Once the Army picked it up,
 it pretty well stuck as a mainstream system, only finally going away
 in the late 1980s. In the Army, and unlike the Navy, teletype equipment
 was never standardized. It would have been common in any Army
 CommCenter, depending where in the world one was stationed, to see
 any and all types of TTY gear: Teletype Corp (US), Siemens and Lorenz
 (Germany), and later, Kleinschmidt (in Germany, France, US). All 3
 companies produced tape relay equipment for the US Army.
 
 More to follow...
 
 Dave F