PH5E wrote:
Okay, thanks Richard. I was a bit confused by all the merges and
take-overs... Nice to see the company has some really old roots.

It's important to note that when Marconi first tried to market his invention
he was laughed out of the country (Italy). Marconi's first backers were
British. Therefore it was a long time before you would find a Marconi
"wireless" on an Italian ship, the company would not sell to them.

As a little history, Marconi used the letter "M" for callsigns, so that's
why Great Britan has both the "G" and "M" prefixes, although it has only
been very recently that they started using M for ham calls.

The Titanic's call sign was MGY. Before sailing it may of had a different
callsign, I was told that once, but have recolection of who said it or
where (sorry). Or for that matter, what they actually said.

Like all telegraphy companies at the time, Marconi used codes to reduce
the amount of sending in each message, they began with the letters "CQ".

That's where "CQ" came from as a calling signal, it meant calling all Macroni
stations, or with a callsign calling Marconi station Mxx. There were others
starting at CQA, but the most famous one is the fourth, which was supposedly
assigned that way because it was the fourth one they made up, not for
any other reason, "CQD", "calling Marconi stations, I need assistance",
or in plain English "HELP!!!".

The Marconi radio operator in New York City who received the Titanic's
distress call was a young boy named Sarnoff who later founded RCA.

Geoff.



--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM