SAMUEL F. B. MORSE, LETTERS AND JOURNALS

STUDENTS' MANUAL for the Practical Instruction of Learners of Telegraphy, J. H. Bunnell & Co. 1884, reprint by L. A. Bailey

THE EDISON ALBUM, Lawrence A. Frost 1969, Seattle

CYCLOPEDIA OF TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY Vol. IV American A Technical Society, 1911 & 1919

Personal Correspondence from: R. J. Miller, Teleplex Co. 22 Oc. 1942 Raymond K. White, Dodge Telegraph School L. R. McDonald, high speed contestant Ivan S. Coggeshall, Western Union, contests and misc. John F. Rhilinger, KC1MI, high speed code Donald K. deNeuf, WA1SPM, various aspects old and new George Hart, W1NJM, high speed code Tony Smith, G4FAI, general and historical L. A. Bailey, American Morse operator William K. Dunbar, K9IMV, AD9E, American Morse operator Verle D. Francis, W0SZF, American Morse operator Charles Bender, W1WPR, former chief operator W1AW ARRL Station Cecil Langdoc, Elkhart, IN, American Morse tapes James S. Farrior, W4FOK, computer programs both codes, Warren L. Hart, AA5YI, general Steven D. Katz WB2WIK, general Tom Perera K2DCY, general Louise Moreau, W3WRE, general Loraine McCarthy, N6CIO, general Carl Chaplain, W7QO, general Gary E. J. Bold, ZL1AN, and probably several others.

Personal discussions with a number of CW operators: George Marshall, amateur 9AER, 9CX, commercial first class from 1915-6, and Navy to about 1945; Quido Schultise, amateur 9NX and commercial from 1919, K6TK, K5OJ; Alvin B. Unruh, 9BIO from 1923, (W)9AWP, commercial, and W0AWP; and others later, including Clarence Wallace (W)9ABJ, my brother P. Kenneth Pierpont, KF4OW volunteer instructor; all of whom contributed something of value (including some materials). Since these materials have been assembled over a period beginning about 1930, some few sources may have been misplaced or lost.

 

With the Psalmist we may well say: "I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well."

The Art & Skill of Radio-Telegraphy

High-Speed Appendix

 

 

I strongly recommend that all those who are starting, or thinking of starting to learn the Morse code, read at least Chapters A and B of this appendix to see how valuable this new approach is. For those who just want to know today’s thinking on this subject it should surely be of interest

 

For those who want realistic help to increase their receiving and sending speeds, especially above 45 to 50-wpm to bring them closer to normal speech rates. (even up to 80 to 100-wpm) it provides useful information and practical guide lines Those who have done this tell us that communicating at these speeds is so much more enjoyable, and that it is now really so easy that there is no good excuse for not at least trying. Not everyone perhaps is physically and mentally able to reach the highest speed. But do enjoy whatever speed you do achieve.

The Chapters Here are:

a) A New Way to Talk?

b) Recommendations for How Best To Achieve It

c) Keyboards - - Code-Sending Typewriters

d) The Experiences of a Number of QRQ Operators Who Have Achieved It

e) Further Thinking

· The ‘High-Speed’ Circuits of Commercial Telegraphy

· No Challenge in Older Times

Chapter A

A New Way to Talk?

It was in 1925 in eastern Pennsylvania that Ed Hart at age 15 became a ham with his first operator’s license and call 3NF (two licenses were required in those days). His 3-1/2 year old younger brother George got curious. What was this Ed was doing and having so much fun with? Was it some sort of new language he was using? -- George said:

”I admired my big brother Ed. He was my ideal. He was 15 and I was 11. I began to learn the Morse code like a baby learns to talk – by listening to my big brother operate and I picked up the ‘code’ by ‘osmosis’-- recognizing and imitating the more frequent sounds I heard.

 

I wasn’t aware of any such thing as “dots” and “dashes”, but only of symbols with meaning.

I quickly learned the sounds of his frequent CQ’s, his call 3NF and special procedure signals such as “AR, K”, “DE” and “R” (all still used), and “U” (for US calls to foreigners before the prefixes W and K were issued), and absorbed other sounds, as sounds with meaning. I just sort of drifted into it by listening. It was easy for me.

”I didn’t start out with any determination to learn the code, or to get a ticket, or get on the air. But one day -- it was 14 Sept. 1926 – using my brother’s station, when I was 12, that I made my first QSO with W9CRJ in Lexington, KY. I was pretty shaky on that first contact and Ed had to finish it for me.

”When I was 14, I clocked myself at 34-wpm, plain language. I discovered that I had mastered the Morse code and was able to carry on a conversation just like Ed did.

”So my advice is to acquire proficiency in code, sit and listen, and keep listening and want to understand it. Anybody who’s learned to talk [and can hear] can learn CW. It’s that easy. Just live with it and it will come to you. Morse code is just another way of talking.”
[Youngsters and adults will no doubt begin to learn in somewhat different ways.]

Learning conversational CW is more like learning to talk than it is to learning another language. It is far easier -- you don’t need to learn how to pronounce or hear strange new kinds of sounds, to learn a new vocabulary or a new grammar. It is just recognizing the simple monotone sounds and imitating them. Learning it is “all a matter of incentive.”

 

“In my opinion achieving high-speed CW is a natural progression, if you learn it right in the beginning and continue to practice it the right ways.” For receiving, George has for many years been able to read code up to 60-wpm, almost to 70, but now he can only send at about 40, and so his QSO’s today are rarely over that speed.

Most of us talk so fluently and so easily that we scarcely give a thought to how very different we are from each and every animal. From birth we are well on our way to learning to express our needs -- for water, for food, to get rid of some discomfort, and for companionship, to be cared for and loved. To be part of the family and society around us -- communicating first in body language and simple cries, and soon in the spoken language of family, friends and neighbors.

Behind “language”, communication is this growing overall sense of our ability to think. Human thinking is a God-like, God-given activity. At first we tend to think of concrete things: things seen, felt, tasted, smelled and heard. But soon we begin to have thoughts of things not having physical existence, things we remember or imagine. We learn to think and express our thoughts about these “things’ in words, too. And people around the world do this in over six thousand recognized and different languages and dialects.

Writing and learning to read are other skills, not “natural” or inherent or innate, but by practice they become almost automatic, as talking is. Learning to write and to read takes conscious effort on each one’s part, and lots of active practice.

Written records of what was once just spoken have been kept for at least some 6000 to 7000 years. Strings of spoken sounds or syllables (as in Japanese, etc.), and sometimes whole words (e. g., Chinese) have been given arbitrary, but conventional symbols “characters”). One such set of symbols has been generally agreed upon within each language group.

Now, what about Morse and other telegraphic codes? Where do they fit in? What are they? They are more like writing than they are of speaking. They are more like a different alphabet or set of symbols than like a language itself. The same set of symbols may “write’ in almost any language.

Many of us today are so literate that we read as easily and readily as we talk. We hardly see the one as being any different from the other. We can think, and express what we are thinking and communicate with those around us, by using our native language, or some other.
Let us here in this appendix think about our views and our attitude toward the Morse code in the above light.

This year, 2001 A. D., the so-called Morse telegraph code reached its 163^rd year of age.

Like printing, it can talk in any language. Using simple stop-start, on-off type signals or motions, we can communicate using touch, sound, light, electricity, radio waves, any medium of exchange.

It has no dialectical peculiarities, no lisps, no strange or difficult-to-hear or pronounce sounds, or “speech defects”, nothing to make it hard to understand. Paralyzed persons can use it to “talk” by blinking the eye or wiggling a finger, even controlled breathing.

More normal people can use it by radio to talk to those on the other side of the world or in space. With practice and the help of modern sending equipment it can be transmitted and “read” by ear at speeds almost as fast as ordinary conversation. It may be sent and received automatically at speeds many times faster, but this is not of interest to us here.

Edward Vail, one of Samuel Morse’s hired and most valuable co-workers, did not realize what a wonderful communication tool he invented in 1838.

Let’s keep these words in mind: it is a communication tool.

In the early days of telegraphy it was thought of as “writing at a distance”, which is what the word “telegraphy” means. (See Ch.19.) But very soon the early operators found they could understand the letters and words from the noises the printing machine made. Then they discovered they could also just converse together without having to write
anything down. This all occurred within 10 - 15 years of the start of commercial telegraphy. Talking by Morse code is not something new at all.

How then did we radio amateurs get started thinking of it as something to have to learn to write down? It is because writing it down exactly as it is heard is the only positive proof that we have correctly received it. This is called “copying”. And to obtain a government amateur operator’s license we had to be able to copy it at a specified speed. (This is still true, but at a speed that is hardly practical -- 5 words per minute.) But do we copy down everything we hear on the telephone? Even to think of that would seem silly. We understand speech because it is spoken as strings of sounds one sound shifting. or blending into the next, to form words and sentences. We learn to understand code the same way, but with a different form of characters, spelled out as words.

This is something that has to be acquired by practice. In this way it resembles reading, because we need to know how to spell. This is an added (hopefully small) difficulty for English speakers Spelling is hardly a problem for speakers of Italian or Spanish, which are spelled almost exactly as they are pronounced.

These are clues to help us speed up our listening to near talking speeds. Now in the next chapter let’s see how to go about it.

Chapter B

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