From: Ian White GM3SEK on Sun, 18 Feb 2007
22:23:56 +0000

wrote:

Also as sent over the land line the operator had
to listen for the gap between clicks NOT the sound of the clicks! Try
that folks!

Irrelevant as to what any telegraph operator did prior to
1900...except for historical notation.

On the contrary, the 'clicker' persisted in some parts of the US
railroad system into at least the 1930s. My wife's father had been a
telegrapher with the Delaware & Hudson, and on joining the US Army for
WW2 he was re-trained to International Morse. He spent the rest of the
war still pounding brass, just doing it differently than before.

However, he didn't go back to the D&H in 1945, so others must determine
exactly when the clicker did die out.

What I described was PRIOR to 1900.

A few railroad carriers in the USA continued with manual
telegraphy until about 1960. But, in fairness to the
world of communications, those were rare.

The railroad system in the USA is not small and it is also
not the biggest carrier of freight over here. Outside of
the roll-on containers carried by rail between drop-off
and pick-up points, the majority of land freight here goes
by truck on our large highway system.

Most of the railways over here had begun converting to
data communications in various forms prior to 1940.


Call the surprise witness...

Witness relates that sometime around 1962, she visited Knott's Berry
Farm with her Dad, Mom and sister. This was back when it was a working
fruit farm, which had expanded into serving home style chicken dinners
and berry pies.

Knott's Berry Farm is a popular tourist spot in southern
California...relatively close to the original Disneyland.
It is roughly an hours' drive south from my Los Angeles
residence.

So it came to pass that the whole family wandered into the office at the
railroad station. There was the telegraph, clicking away... Dad froze
in intense concentration, and then doubled over with laughter! When he
got his breath back, he told Mom and the girls what the clicks were
saying:

"Eat chicken dinners"

No doubt. The Knotts place IS a tourist attraction. But,
that reproduction of a railroad station is nothing more
than a reproduction. It is not a working communications
station. There are several railway station reproductions
in the Greater Los Angeles area and parts of them on
various motion picture production lots. Perhaps the best
one is on the north side of Griffith Park (closest to my
southern home) which is also a railway museum.

Knotts also has several buggies and a reproduction of an
"old west" stagecoach. Neither of which are used in any
public transportation outside of the park. In the motion
picture industry here (very big) there is a mild
contention as to which craftsmen build the "best
stagecoaches" (using modern materials having better
characteristics). Those can be made to "break apart"
safely for the cameras and stunt people riding them.
However, stagecoaches have not been used for public
transportation here for decades.


Witness personally affirms that the message was delivered through the
clicking of the telegraph sounder.

I have nothing against that. In nearby Anaheim, Disneyland
still has a flight to the moon experience (in Tomorrowland)
yet it never leaves the ground. One can also take a ride in
a "submarine" but not go more than a few feet below
the water's surface.

Witness is now MM3YNW, and is standing watching me type this. Don't you
all think she should learn Morse to continue the family tradition?

That is up the family suddenly thrust upon this (non)
discussion.

I was unaware that "wives and families" suddenly had some
impact on what is known about telegraphic communications
history in its half century before "radio" was demonstrated
as a communications medium.

I first "fired up" on HF in February 1953, part of my being
assigned to a US Army communications station in Tokyo. That
was a small 1 KW HF transmitter using TTY FSK. There were
three dozen other transmitters there; six more would be
added by 1955. NONE of the radio circuits of this 3rd
largest Army station used any OOK CW mode of modulation.
In my subsequent career change after service into
electronics design engineer I've never had a requirement
to use OOK CW on radio. Until 2005 when my wife and I bought
a new car having a keyless entry radio-on-a-chain-fob. That
fob transmitter is OOK CW. But, its data rate is beyond
human cognition, ANY human.

In 1969 my father and father-in-law were still alive. Both
watched, in widely separated geographical locations (in
the comfort of their homes), LIVE video from the moon as
the first two humans stepped onto the lunar surface. Both
my father and father-in-law were born in the year 1900...
one year before Marconi's trans-Atlantic test radio
transmission and three years before the Wright Brothers
demonstrated the first heavier than air flight. Both
astronauts plus Collins in the lunar orbiter were in
constant touch with earth by radio...for both
communications and telemetry, guided there by computers
of several kinds, on earth as well as in the reentry
and descent/ascent capsule.

I have nothing against telegraphic skills nor anyone using
those for personal pleasure. However, in the light of
advancement of the electronic arts, communications, radio,
methods that ALL of us can share, I think there is an
over-much emphasis by radio hobbyists on telegraphic arts.
Manual telegraphy IS a historic first but it has been
supplanted in practical communications means at our
disposal...on land, in the air, on the sea, and in space.

I think we should be looking FORWARD to the future, not
back to the past. Others disagree. I leave it at that.