[GreenKeys] Tape Relay Equipment

[Howard Weeks]

I live a few miles down the road from this museum and have worked 
next door for many years.

It has gone down hill significantly during the last 10 - 15 years.  
In my opinion, not the fault of the museum staff but can be laid at 
the feet of the "senior management" at the school.  Most are just not 
interested in the museum.  There isn't much on display and I do not 
think I saw any type of teletype machine the last time I was there.  

They have traditionally had a lot of stuff stored and very little of 
it on display.  At one time a few years back, much of the stored 
stuff was in an old barracks building with a hole in the roof.  That 
has been corrected but I really do not know whether they still have 
all of the previously stored items or not.  

Fort Monmouth has a better Signal oriented museum than the one at 
Gordon.  It has been a few years since I was in that one so can't say 
what the status is at the present time.  Monmouth is scheduled to be 
closed.  

There has always been two separate communication domains in the Army -
(1) fixed station or strategic communications and systems versus (2) 
tactical communication systems.  The tactical communication systems 
have always been pretty standardized including the TTY gear.  The 
fixed station stuff is as Dave described - all over the place.

Howard K5JCP in Harlem, GA

On 17 May 2008 at 18:57, gil at baudot.net wrote:

> 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
>  
> 
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Howard Weeks
Harlem, GA 
K5JCP