I think we need to distinguish between the marine radio
operation of KPH and the RCA Communications point to point
service which was also run from Bolinas Point. The marine service
through KPH was telegraph with later some RTTY to ships at sea
while the RCA Communications service ran some large number of
circuits to Pacific Rim countries. KPH was connected via wire
telegraph. Richard Dillman could supply details. The messages to
be sent and received from ships would be relayed by telegraph. I
suspect these circuits were machine code both ways and later
Teletype.
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Quite correct, the distinction between the marine service and the point to point service is important to keep in mind.
The American Marconi Company came to the coast of Marin county north of San Francisco to build the point to point transmit station at Bolinas. The corresponding receive station was built at Marshall(s). The station was placed in service in February 1914. The transmitter was the standard Marconi rotary gap rated at about 230kW. The call sign was KET.
In 1920 RCA replaced the Marconi transmitter with two Alexanderson alternators on about 26kc (high for an alternator but necessary at Bolinas due to the short antenna) with 200kW output each. The KET call sign was retained. They were so proud of the alternators that they placed a bronze plaque on the transmitter building.
RCA was formed, as we know, to absorb the interests of American Marconi and thereby prevent that company from obtaining monopoly use of the Alexanderson alternator. It's true that the Alexanderson alternators were dead reliable. But the reason that alternator installations were discontinued was the advent of HF as a revenue generating technology.
The the point to point service, from the beginning until its demise in 1973, no actual operating was done at the transmit or receive stations. This was controlled at the CRO (Central Radio Office) in San Francisco (or the corresponding city for other stations). Outgoing messages were transferred to Wheatstone tape at the CRO and sent by wire line to key the appropriate transmitter (the alternator or, later, the HF transmitter aimed at a particular city). Incoming messages were received on diversity receivers (one of which we have restored) and activated tone keyers at the receive site. These tones were sent to the CRO by wire line where they were recorded on ink recorders. Later, then FSK replaced Morse, the same process was followed using Baudot. Unique to the point to point service, on HF each frequency had its own call sign rather than an overall station call sign.
In contrast, in the marine service all operations were (and are) handled at the receive site. Outgoing messages were received by land line Morse (later by teleprinter) from the CRO and placed in the message rack for transmission. When a calling ship had traffic traffic on hand the operator retrieved the message from the rack and sent it manually, remotely keying the transmitters in Bolinas. Incoming messages were also received manually and typed on a mill or, later, into a message handling system. Delivery was through the CRO by teleprinter or bicycle messenger except in the case of a sea letter message. These were mailed by station personnel (I have one in my collection). These days they are delivered via email.
WX and PX was received at the receive station on punched 5 level tape. A Baudot to Morse converter was used to key the KPH transmitters from the 5 level tape. Today we send PX and WX obtained via the Internet.
Our order wire between Bolinas and Point Reyes is a land line teletype circuit which we think may be one of the few remaining, certainly in this application.
We are unaware that point to point service handled voice telephone circuits although the station did provide broadcast service for the OWI during WWI, one transmitter having the call KRCA. The AT&T station next to RCA handled point to point voice circuits as did the station at Half Moon Bay/Palo Alto (marine call KFS).
VY 73,
RD