[GreenKeys] Father "RTTY"

[Jim Haynes]

Yes, W2BFD deserves a lot of credit for introducing RTTY into amateur
radio.  Seems like I heard that all those Model 12 machines they were
using at the time were surplussed by the New York Police Dept.  -  which
they would have needed to do since Teletype was no longer supplying
spare parts for that ancient model, and had not made any for a long time.

Wayne Green was first the RTTY columnist for CQ magazine before being
named editor.  Sadly, there came up some kind of rift between Wayne
and W2BFD, with later articles in CQ warning people against sending
money to a "one man society" for equipment.  CQ printed a notice of
W2BFD's death some months after the fact, saying he had left behind
several warehouses of equipment.

The New York group published a bulletin under the name of ARTS, for
Amateur Radio Teletype Society.  Sometimes that group called itself
the national RTTY organization.  The RTTY Society of Southern California
started its bulletin RTTY in 1953 with Merrill Swan W6AEE as editor.
RTTY soon became the de facto national RTTY publication, as ARTS came
out rather sporadically.  Thus Merrill deserves a lot of credit as an
information gatherer and distributor and a promoter of RTTY.

Another one who deserves a lot of credit is Bob Weitbrecht W6NRM/W9TCJ.
Bob was deaf from an early age, learned CW and got his ham radio license.
I think of this as an analog of that famous cartoon with the caption,
"On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog."  In ham radio (CW) nobody
knows you're deaf.  (Bob used an old pair of earphones for CW copy;
and had either enough hearing at one specific frequency or the ability
to feel the vibration from the headphones.)  When RTTY came along he
naturally got excited about a non-hearing mode that was a lot faster
and less tiring than CW.  The W9TCJ call sign came while Bob was working
for a few years at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin - much of his
professional work involved electronics for astronomy.  In the early
years of RTTY you can read of his wide-ranging travel to meet with other
RTTY enthusiasts or to help others get on the air.  Bob was less visible
in his later years because he was quite involved with TTY telephony for
the deaf community.

It took a lot of work to get the Bell System to agree to release TTY
machines to hams.  This came about at a fortunate time, because the
Bell System was just getting rid of a lot of Model 26 machines.  The
Model 26 had been developed in the late 1930s as an attempt at a reduced
cost machine for the TWX users who didn't need such a heavy duty machine
as the Model 15.  As it turned out the Model 26 didn't save enough money
to justify the extra cost of manufacturing it alongside the Model 15,
so manufacture was discontinued.  By the early 1950s the Bell System
decided the Model 26 could be phased out and Teletype could quit making
spare parts for it.