[GreenKeys] 1939 Commercial RTTY?

[John Nagle]

> From: David Burns<dvdbrns at rcn.com>
> Subject: [GreenKeys]  1939 Commercial RTTY?
>
> My speculation would be that it is highly unlikely, but these folks would know for sure:
> Maritime Radio Historical Society<http://www.radiomarine.org/>.
>
> -Dave in Boston
>
>      I got a query from a writer who must have seen something about
>      teletypes on my website.  He asked, first, if it would be historically
>      accurate to have a shipping company in 1939 use a Teletype;
>      the answer to that is clearly yes.  He then asks if, specifically,
>      they might receive things such as manifests from ships (presumably
>      at sea) via (radio)teletype?  Technically this was possible, of course,
>      but I don't know if it was then (1939) standard practice.  Was it?
>
>      Regards,
>      David M.
>      ===
>      Dr. David M. MacMillan  -dmm at lemur.com<http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys>

     Probably not.

     If a ship sent a radiogram in 1939, it would have been in Morse.
Teletype machines weren't really suitable for shipboard operation
back then, and radio signals weren't clean enough.  However, if a
ship sent a message in Morse to a marine radio station, it would
be forwarded over Teletype facilities once on land, and a shipping
company with a Teletype would probably send and receive its messages
in that way.

     Sending an entire ship's manifest by shipboard radio would
be very expensive. International cable rates of the 1920s were
around $0.50 per word (in an era when that was a day's pay.)
Marine radio messages tended to be brief.  Long distance
communication, voice, telegraph, or Teletype, was extremely
expensive in that period.  Cheap data transmission dates
only from the late 1980s.  That's something a writer needs
to recognize.

     A Model 15 variant for shipboard use was developed during
WWII, with extra-heavy frames and a much stronger carriage advance
mechanism.  Someone on Greenkeys had one of those a year or two ago.
That thing was rated to work with the machine 45 degrees off vertical.


				John Nagle