[SOC] Western Union ends Telegram Service after more than 150 years

[Fred Jensen]

Bob Naumann - W5OV wrote:
 > Samuel Morse, inventor of the Morse Code, sent the first telegram from
 > Washington to Baltimore on May 26, 1844, to his partner Alfred Vail
 > ...

Not totally true, and if life was fair, we would be communicating with 
the "Vail Code."  Morse did invent the mechanisms for receiving 
electrical signals and inking a moving tape with them which was then 
"read" to decipher the message.  However, he was infatuated with using a 
numerical code in which you read the numbers off the tape and then 
looked up the various combinations in his dictionary to get letters, 
words, and phrases (and later, even whole messages).  Old Sam was also a 
whiner, and if things weren't going his way, he'd be taken ill, and 
would spend a lot of time in bed ... often someone else's bed because he 
was often a guest.  He spent most of the time after inventing the 
mechanisms working on his "dictionary."

Sam does get credit for probably being one of the first to experiment 
with prefix codes for his dictionary.  These are codes that require no 
spaces.  The most used codes are the shortest, and as soon as you have 
found combination that will decode in the dictionary, you do so and then 
start a new codeword at that point.  That didn't work for him however, 
since to realize you had a codeword, you had to look up every 
combination up in the book.

Alfred Vail, on the other hand quickly observed that the whole idea of 
the dictionary was a crock, and modified the code so you just sent 
letters that spelled out the message.  Vail and other operators also 
soon realized that the clicking and clacking of the tape inker was 
sufficient to decode the message by ear, and American Morse was born. So 
far as I know, Vail was also not a whiner.

There arose a short fight about this ... with Morse and others asserting 
that a message was not reliable unless it was read off the tape which 
could be checked.  Sort of like voting machines not leaving a paper 
trail.  In time however, the telegraph sounder (more clicks and clacks) 
replaced the tape inker, and the controversy faded, much to the dismay 
of Sam, who yet again fell ill and took to his (or someone's) bed having 
not gotten his way.

American Morse relies not so much on dots and dashes as on clicks and 
spaces, hence the sounder rather than a buzzer.  You can use it on the 
radio, but it's uncomfortable.  Notwithstanding, when I was a teen, I 
had several teen radio buddies and we used to get on 80m at night in 
American Morse just to fake out everyone else.  There were other things 
we did as teens to generally create constarnation, but that's a long 
digression, and I'm not a teenager anymore (thank God!).  I did use some 
of this on my extensive application for membership in SOC however. 
International Morse arose with the advent of the wireless.

Sorta sad that the telegram has faded into history, although once the 
teletype was invented, the sounder, clerk with arm bands and green 
eyeshade, and hand-sent American Morse disappeared.  Just like 500 Kc, 
Maritime CW, and typewriters with all caps ("mills").

Fred K6BeW IMI K6DPW IMI K6DGW
Auburn CA CM98lw (or somewhere in that general vicinity)