From: "John Smith" on Sat 2 Jul 2005 20:50

Mike:

No. I don't think you understand anything. But, I think I read you
loud and clear. You want to pretend everyone is making fun of poor
old ancient hams and they don't deserve it. Get real, they need it
alright, they need to wake up.

Good posting, John, you've synopsized what most of the silent
readers have already surmised about these Ancient Radio
Astronauts that no one was in search of. Coslo "wants" a
super-simple explanation so that he and other Titled, federally
authorized amateurs can look down on others while holding up
their super-special morse keys, gloating in triumph of
"achievement." I will fill in a few blanks (or rather, blank
stares) for the morsemen...

For "education" on information compression, there is Claude
Shannon's 1947 paper that explained the basic laws. The rest
of the radio world gave it a peer review and accepted it en toto.
The full paper is archived at the University of Illinois website
and may be elsewhere. "Shannon's Law" has been given in so many
communications textbooks of the last half century that it is a
major months' work just to do a bibliography. It is universal,
it is accepted. The many pages on statistics involved aren't
necessary to fully understand the concept (thousands of others
have already gone through them with critical fine-teeth combs
and passed it). "Shannon's Law" relates Rate-Bandwidth-Noise-
Error in as elegant a form as possible. It is absolute. It is
the Touchstone, the Bedrock in communications. ALL
communications, NO exceptions.

Once the basic relationship is accepted, the student can then
turn to information reduction-compression, especially in the
high redundancy of human speech-symbolism-utterance-imagery.
The SECOND version of "morse code" (the one including letters
and some punctuation, the first one was only numbers) owes
much to even earlier manual type setters. In English the letter
E is the most frequently used one, so type setters arranged
their type case/holders with the E slugs at easy reach. Alfred
Vail, Morse's financial angel, saw that and suggested it to
Morse. In that way morse code's letter E is the shortest
possible data information bit, a single "dit." The other letters
followed - roughly - the type setters' arrangements, less-used
letters having longer time completions. Punctuations are given
long time sequence completions, occurring less often than
letters. Numbers are of approximate same length, apparently in
a hold-over of Morse's first code scheme (unknown, that is
really arbitrary except to those who just want to argue angels
on heads of pins busy-work). The end result was a rather
complex sequence of short-long-interval time-related BITS to
represent the major components of the ENGLISH language, native
to Morse and Vail and most everyone in their 'hood.

Enter the Morse-Vail Telegraph System, now patented, in 1844.
Primitive in electrical terms but vastly faster than message
transport by horseback and something that will work through
visual obscuration (as in the European visual semaphores).
The heart of the Morse-Vail Telegraph is the RELAY, all else
is secondary. By replacing the ink pen of the first telegraph
"receiver" with a solenoid-activated key/switch, a whole new
circuit can be created to EXTEND THE LENGTH of the original
one, this time with another battery (very primitive in 1844)
that could extend the whole telegraph path fourfold then...
for the equivalent of "positive copy" using more modern terms.
This worked remarkably well for its time, was reasonably
economical then, and the ink pen traces could be "read" with
very little training by unfamiliar "operators." Note: All
"telegraphers" were required to read-write English (or their
native language for foreign adapters of the system) since the
"telegarph code" was just a REPRESENTATIVE of the characters
of the language.

As the Morse-Vail Telegraph system spread (remarkably for its
time), the ink pen tracings were replaced by acoustic "sounders,"
the same ink pen solenoid arms now striking some semi-
resonant device to create audible clicks. Telegraph operators
were now required to have good hearing as well as the (rare
then) reading-writing pre-knowledge/skill. Each telegraph
circuit required a telegrapher at each end, first to transpose
the sender's written message into the telegraph symbolism, a
second specialist at the receiving end to re-convert dots and
dashes to the written language readable by the recipient.

The concept of the RELAY applies to radio by simply replacing
the wire lines with the electromagnetic waves of radio, the
transmitter controlled by the telegraph key switch, the radio
receiver having some sort of acoustic sounder equivalent
(nearly always headphones due to lack of amplification). Early
radio was exceedingly PRIMITIVE, totally lacking in active
amplifying devices such as the vacuum tube triode. Spark-
discharge damped-wave-oscillation "transmitters" were their own
"BFOs" for primitive "receivers" so that a receiving operator
could discern the on from the off by the growl of the spark
transmitter. This was stone-age technology hardly different
from the primitive electrical lines of 1844.

Primitive "information compression" had already begun in wireline
telegraph systems, everything from short-form numbers for common
salutations ("73" for written 'best regards') to five-character
groups standing for entire sentences (common in commercial
communications such as in the many-edition Bentley's Commercial
Code books). With the beginnings of radio (heartily endorsed by
the maritime people as something they never had before - over-the-
horizon-communications!) came a whole new set of shorthand such
as "Q" and "Z" 'codes' standing for whole phrases and sentences.
[Q and Z are least-used English language letters, thus would be
less confused with English words beginning with those letters].
Information compression had arrived although it was attributed
to the "magic" of the telegraph, a misattribute but advantageous
to the boosters of the new "technology" of radiotelegraphy.

Lurking off to one side of this new "miracle technology" called
radio was the teleprinter. Teleprinting sought to find a direct
link from sender to receiver by dispensing with human specialists
of telegraphy...for security reasons, for personal reasons, for
an increase in communications time (cutting down the transposing
and decoding in manual telegraphy). Work on development of
teleprinting had already begun in the mid-1800s, hampered more
by machining capability and mechanical devices than the primitive
electricity of its time...but utilizing character codes each
having the SAME length of time. The end of teleprinting
experiments showed that was a necessity to permit automatic
decoding of teleprinter signals at the receiving end. That
equal-time coding can't be grasped intuitively except by
comparisons to unequal-time codings such as "morse code" or
even the human languages spoken-heard.

Human languages have HIGHLY UNEQUAL lengths of time to convey
information. The exact reasons are not fully known but it is
a common fact...yet everything from emotions to complex
abstract concepts can be communicated by human languages
(whether or not the receptor is able to comprehend any of them).
It has been suggested that the HIGH REDUNDANCY of human speech
(and its written form) is a form of "error detection"...or the
ability to "work through QRM or QRN in more modern radio terms."
The end result is that spoken and written languages take a lot
of time just to communicate. This is a sidelight to information
coding, applicable but not a prime example of it.

Teleprinter equal-time-per-character encoding/decoding has
definite advantages for separating communications from noise.
Noise is random. Signals are repetitive. Machines and circuits
can separate the two logically. In addition, the equal-time-
per-character timing allows actual noise-distortion-CORRECTION
by logic circuits, either in-line or off-line. No long-time
multiply-redundant information transfer is required. Such can
be done by mere doubling of teleprinter character code times to
include parity error-detection and correction bits. While
teleprinting is also a representation of a written language,
the SAME shorthand that was applied to "morse code" can be
applied to teleprinting.

Note: There is much "noise" (largely QRM, not QRN) from manual
telegraphers in the form of myths and "magics" of telegraphy
that obscured the advantages of teleprinting. This derived,
perhaps, because telegraphy (simpler in technology) came first
and thus had a chance to establish its PR basis. Another, more
subtle, was that the speed, security, and relative economy of
teleprinting caused business, commerce, and governments to
eventually displace manual telegraphy with teleprinting. All of
those "downsized" manual telegraphers were lacking a trade to
ply their specialized skills. "Radio" appeared just in time to
rescue many of those manual telegraphers, give them new jobs.
By the 1930s teleprinting was the mainstay of written
communications worldwide...despite the insistance of manual
telegraphers that this was not so and thus generating so much
man-made QRM. Teleprinters could operate for hours on end at
equivalent 60 WPM rates then, needing no breaks for sleep,
ingestion of food, or elimination of wastes...just feed them
paper and ink ribbons, oil them once in a while, and they
can run 24/7 if needs be.

Segue to 1915, AT&T, the first vacuum tubes, and the first
real "radio." John Carson of AT&T showed his mathematical
equations describing the spectral contents of the three
basic carrier wave modulations: Amplitude, Frequency, and
Phase. Amplitude modulation is doubly redundant in the
spectrum (but does not need to remain that way to convey
information). One modulation sideband could be eliminated
without losing any information! AT&T applied that to wired
long-distance lines to create the first use of "single
sideband." Primitive information compression but yet true
information compression (of an analog kind).

Advance to 1948, keep AT&T in the picture, add hundreds of
researchers on Information Theory (sparked by Shannon's Law)
and cryptology and the basics of logic circuits (using tubes
as Athanasof's Ohio State U. first computer did) and Information
Theory spreads in a mushroom of megatons of new capabilities.
Bell Labs announces the birth of the transistor, the new
messiah for all electronics. In the next two decades the
"modem" is born...first at a relative snail's pace of 300
WPM equivalent...then 1200 WPM...then on to 2400 WPM...until
finally beginning to nudge the limit of Shannon's Law at a
rate equal to 56,000 Words Per Minute! [five 10-bit ASCII
characters plus an equal time space make up a "word" here]

Recall that basic AM was described in 1915. But, a common
plain old telephone line has a bandwidth of only about 3 KHz
(slightly more but it drops off rapidly after 3 KHz). Sending
56 THOUSAND anythings per second is "impossible?" No, it is
established fact and nearly everyone in here does that every
time they log onto an ISP. What a 56K modem does is to
COMBINE both AM and PM in a digital way, add a soupcon of
Information Coding in an elegant way in silicon hardware and
voila(!) a seeming "impossibility" is proven fact. No "magic."
Just clever (I'd say Machiavellian) innovations on using
already proven laws to accomplish this "impossibility."

A 56K modem principle of operation is NOT intuitive...except
maybe to an electronic genius (I am not such). It requires
familiarity with many different areas of existing technology
that are not classical "radio" (that being old-time analog
only circuitry of the 1930s-1940s). The only impossibility
is trying to describe How It Works in a short message; it isn't
possible in a long message, even with binaries allowed (not
allowed in this newsgroup). Yet it WORKS. Daily. By the
hundreds of thousands worldwide every minute. The technical
details are Out There for those that wish to study it.

Immediately the key-banging beepers will shout "that isn't
ham radio!" It is definitely NOT the "ham radio" of the
1930s. Ham radio of then didn't have RTTY nets, let alone
"computers" of today to arrange QSOs via the Internet. :-)
But, the PRINCIPLE of Information Coding/Theory applies and
the 56K modem is a ubiquitous example of today. SCALING
of RATE does apply in any Information Coding/Theory. One
can go lower in rate, keep the bandwidths narrow as the minds
of those stuck in 1930s technology. Look at PSK31.

PSK31 was devised/innovated/elegantly-conceived by Peter
Martinez, G3PLX. It is capable of 30 WPM sustained rate
equivalent in a narrowband space no wider than that used by
a manual radiotelegraph circuit. Teleprinting. The modem
is in hardware-software, not the operator's wetware. Martinez
displayed a willingness to experiment, to try out the new, to
innovate, as he did three decades before using the polyphase
network to generate SSB (in Radio Communications magazine of
1973, I have copies of that). SCALING of rate and some
clever adaptations of Coding Theory did the trick. It works.
But, it took a LONG time to appear over on this side of the
Pond. Hams in Yurp tried it out first. Ham-wise, the much-
ballyhooed "Yankee Ingenuity" was nowhere to be found...nor
the courage to TRY...all were too busy talking of their
"radiosport" scores and certificate awards (suitable for
framing) and telling tall tales of their "pioneering the
radio arts" (by others done much earlier). American ethos
(and mythos) were all centered around manual morsemanship.

Why would (as Coslonaut and Flint) anyone WANT to send
a half-Gigabyte streaming DVD data on HF?!?!? Ridiculous.
But...what CAN be done in the narrowbanded, marrowminded
playground of HF is DATA of many kinds. "PicturePhone"
video, perhaps, slow-speed imagery so that everyone can sit
around their ham shacks and admire each others' radio gear?
Can be done in the spectralspace of a SSB phone signal.

Digital Radio Mondial is now broadcast on HF from Europe and
Asia in over two dozen programs each day. It is digital on
HF, can be digital on LF, MF, and VHF, all without taking
more spectral space than an AM broadcast. It works, despite
the ignorant protestations of narrowbanded narrowminded
amateurs emphasizing the glory and nobility of morsemanship
"working through when nothing else will" in usual brags.

A possibility of what can be done is 1200 Baud (1200 WPM)
data streamed through a bandwidth of 250 Hz using a combo
of amplitude and phase modulation...the equivalent modem
being the RF source. Perhaps 2400 WPM in a 500 Hz BW, either
data rate faster than what is normally done now on HF and,
by experience, quite fast enough for BBS downloading and
message handling. It could make the ballyhooed "NTS" a
force equal to its overblown reputation. Such will not be
accepted by the narrowband, narrowminded crowd who will
demand seeing the Blessing of the league first, then ads in
QST featuring peripherals at a given price, before believing
it is possible. Even then they would not understand anything
but the ads in QST.


Now, all you have to do is replace your phone line with a rf signal
and you have the same thing between two stations. Not only should a
child realize this is possible, but anyone arguing different should be
given a three day mental examination.

The very first radios did exactly that to wired telegraph
systems. The vaunted ARRL started that way...actually doing
the equivalent of hacking commercial telegraph systems (one
has to read the ENTIRE league history in order to find that
gem but it is there). But, radio amateurs STOPPED there and
very few went further. The league did much the same.

No. I know your game far too well mike, you are sneaky and
underhanded. You seek to manipulate the less technical savvy into
thinking simple things are impossible just because they are NOT
happening on ham radio.

The olde-fahrts (chronological or mindset) are the ultimate
hobbyist conservatives. Anything new/revolutionary must meet
some kind of "test in battle" to "prove its worth." [and,
of course, have such product ads in QST as double proof]


No. Truth is you are reaping just what you have sown, you have
resisted change and chased off all the younger minds who would bring
change with them, then you sent and tap on ancient brass keys
(probably vibroflexs from the 70's in reality) and convince yourselves
you are doing a "service", you are doing a service alright, it is
called a "snow job!"

But...But...they have "qualified" by federal test! :-)

They are federally authorized to turn their mighty stations' HF
carriers ON and OFF in that epitome of all communications modes,
morse code! And READ the same signals without anything but a
simple receiver! Deus ex machina meets state-of-the-art!

They have TITLES! [certificates suitable for framing to amaze
their family, friends, and neighbors] Morsemen are the TOP
Grade! They have reached the ULTIMATE in upgrading!

They are AMATEURS, far greater and far better than any evil
(hock a loogie to them) professionals in radio! They must be
because they say they are...! :-)