Keyboards – Code-Sending Typewriters
Perforated or inked Code tapes were used commercially - prepared at slower speeds and sent at speeds up into the hundreds of wpm by a tape reader. The expense and time delay made the use by amateurs impractical and costly, except for functions like ARRL code practice or bulletins.
The first machines were mechanical devices. Some were developed before 1900 and most of them used other types of codes than Morse. Yeoman was a Morse keyboard used to some extent. Some both sent and received as letters and punctuation. One was a real mechanical marvel and won a world prize award. It was:
"A Telegraph Key With a MEMORY" described such a mechanical marvel, designed by Edwin H. Persian of the Persian Telegraph Company of Topeka KS which manufactured them in 1910. It had a four-row keyboard and a large drum on which the characters are embossed deeply. It was about the size of a regular typewriter. (Described in QST July 1963 p. 70f.)
It had a hand-cranked spring drive motor like the old phonographs, but was enclosed within a long cylindrical drum under torque from the driving spring. Through a gear drive this drum controlled, when acted upon by an ingenious escape mechanism, one line of a second and larger drum called the memory drum.
The rotatable character memory drum was complicated. It had a total of 3240 deeply embossed code characters, corresponding to the 45 letter, number and punctuation keys, and an equal number of escapement tabs.
Each horizontal line of 45 embossed characters was identical, with total of 72 of them around the drum. If one looked at one character in any row and then went around the drum at that position in the line, he would find the same letter at that identical position in each line.
The operator typed into the memory character by character. As he pressed each key the trip device would remember that character and move to the next line until a total of 72 characters (the length of memory) had been used up. As soon as he started typing the drive would begin sending perfect code characters and spaces in order.
It would continue sending, and a dial on the front of the keyboard would show how many characters were still to be sent. The operator could keep on sending as long as the meter showed space to list, and the mechanism would continue sending until nothing more remained in memory. He could send continuously -- very long continuous messages. The operator thus constantly knew how far the machine was sending behind his keying until it would stop, allowing opportunity to rewind the motor, if necessary.
As he continued typing, the dial would update its information. This was a very clever and practical device. .
All characters and their spaces, word and sentence spaces were correctly and perfectly formed.
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My suspicion is that most of the mechanical keyboards, like this one, sent relatively slowly, with a maximum on the order of 30 -35 wpm.
Only one such machine is known to exist -- it is in the Topeka State Museum.
QST in May 1961 described the "Codamite", Model MG-100, developed and being manufactured by the Ling-Temco Electronics, Inc., with the technical help of the R. W. Johnson Co. It must have been developed, built, and then used by W6MUR and then demonstrated extensively. Its circuit diagram and method of operation are described during 1960. It was primarily intended for commercial use, but was of great interest to
amateurs.
It was installed in a small suitcase-like carrying case with hinged lid, measuring about 6.5 inches wide, 4.5inches front-to-back and about 3.5 inches thick. The character-keys on a drum stretched all the way from side to side in four "vertical" rows, and the time and level controls were at the top of the keyboard. It was self-powered by an inboard 9 v. battery. Its output was monitored by a self-contained oscillator and speaker.
It operated like a typewriter - touch a key and let it go, and the desired character was automatically produced, one letter at a time. All spacing between letters and between words was manual, made space by space by the operator.
In later keyboard designs, the code characters were defined by the spaces between the elements of each character, using digital logic, not by the start and stop elements of the tone. These used solid state devices (AND/OR, FLIP-FLOP, and transistors) with a Magnetic Core Shift Register for storage memory. Continuing new developments (chips, etc.) greatly simplified to ease of operation and sending quality.
Several designs were promoted developed and promoted by amateurs. Some few of these and some commercial designs are in QST's of July 1965 pp. 11 - 20, QST July 1969 p. 11ff, Aug. 1970, p. 47, QST 1973 Nov. p. 56ff. . All these were before PC type computers came out in 1980-81. John Ricks W9TO was a major developer and high-speed operator.
Keyers made it easier to send faster, and there must have been an overall general speed increase with their arrival in the 1960’s but it was the keyboard that really started the great step upward in speed.
Among the early keyboards were: in 1961 the “Codamite”, in 1967 one designed by John Ricks W9TO -- these and others had no memory. They had no space bar. (Others had no more than the automatic individual letter spacing after each character). Spaces were made by the operator.
In 1974 the “Curtis KB-4200 Morse Keyboard” was one of the first units with a space bar to provide normal controlled word spacing It also had a mini-memory which allowed typing 64 characters ahead of sending. A meter showing how many character spaces there were between typing and sending allowed a form of “continuous” typing.
Somewhere in this period the addition of a buffer-mini-memory made the Keyboards far more useful and faster. The following QST's -- Oc.1974 p.40ff. (allowed a 64 character mini-memory); Jul.1975 p. 11; Se.1976 p.11; Ja.1978 p. 24; Oc.1979 p. 22ff. (This article is perhaps worth reading for information on design problems, but falls far short of some of the others in utility and flexibility.); Ja.1980 P. 44ff (should be interest for designers.)
Chapter D
The Experiences of a Number of QRQ Operators
Who Have Achieved It
(I have brought together in this appendix a number of the super-high-speed operators’ experiences in learning and using high code speeds. All, except for Gary Bold, are from the US. It is as accurate as I can make it. It has been coordinated with those named, insofar as they are still alive and able to respond. You can see that there is not just one single way to reach high speeds, but people have done it in several ways.)
This file is roughly in historical sequence.
In the contest stages, the highest key-sent code speeds were in the range of 45-55 wpm using a bug. Test speeds above this were achieved by commercial high-speed punched-tape sending machines. The evidence for winners in those days was the ability to COPY. Ability to READ did not count.
#1 Perhaps the best known and most famous operator at high-speeds is Ted McElroy who from 1922 on, almost permanently held the high-speed record. He was a commercial telegrapher, not a ham.
On 6 May 1922, he learned of an Exposition in Boston, which would include a code speed contest. His boss allowed him the evening off to try, and he easily wound up using International Morse code, which by then he hadn’t used for about a year, at 51 wpm. It was great fun for him. Later in 1922 at Chicago he won the trophy at 55-1/2 wpm with perfect copy for the World’s Championship.
In Sep. 1935 in a contest at Brockton MA he lost it to his friend Joe W. Chaplin at 55.3-wpm, by making 11 errors. Then again at the World’s Fair he scored 69 wpm with only two errors, while Joe Chaplin made three. What many may not know is that in July 1939 he and Lavon McDonald of Chicago tied at 75 wpm. But when the speed increased to 77-wpm, McDonald fumbled worse than Ted did (he made some bad errors, too), so the judges credited him with 75.2 wpm, the winner. He has not been challenged since and has 75.2-wpm remained as the official world’s record.
Ted acknowledged that there were many other operators who had abilities as good or better than his, but they did not enter the contest. What most people do not know is that Lavon N. McDonald was equal with him, and but for a slip in the increase to 77-wpm trial, might have been the technical winner.
Ted was born 1 Sep. 1901 and died suddenly in Nov. 1963. He was one of four brothers who were telegraphers. He left school in 1916 and went to work for Western Union as a messenger boy. As he passed by the telegraphers, he saw how many of them could nonchalantly turn out 50 - 60 messages per hour. He managed to get some of them to teach him Morse code during their 15-minute rest periods. After a few weeks he imagined that he was himself to be a good operator. He got a try-out. It was tough, but it gave him a start. He found piecemeal telegrapher’s jobs here and there and finally wound up at Fort Devons, near Ayer MA, where he continued until the end of the war in 1918.
Back in Boston he got a job using International Morse code at station RCA, Chatham MA. It was rough getting used to the new (International Morse) code during the first two weeks. In 1920 the station moved to New York City, but the move didn’t work out well for him so he moved back to Boston and got a job with Western Union again.
In a telegram to Frank Borsody dated 14 Sep. 1933 he wrote “to my old pal Frank Barsody, in grateful recognition of the valuable coaching and assistance he gave me, to which I owe my ability to gain the world’s championship as Radio Operator.” And again in a letter dated 4 Sep. 1935 to Frank Borsody Ted wrote “You have been the best friend to me on this code racket that I’ve got. I cannot understand how I can fail to win it this year. As I sit in this chair I am copying solid (?) without a single error for five or ten minutes at a time, at 70 wpm, and I cannot understand how any (blankety) living man can do the same, because I know that the signals I am copying can’t be read [copied?] by anyone else, that is, without error.
In a telegram from Dorchester MA dated in 1935 to Borsody, McElroy wrote: “I want to tell you that I very deeply appreciate the help you give me in winning the title. Your equipment and advice really won the title. I will never forget the debt I owe you.” [Notice that this totally refutes the rubbish he wrote as to how much Candler’s method had helped him.]
Borsody, in letter marked in ink “received April 1975”, wrote to Bill Eitel that at the exhibit he had invited Ted to sit down and take a little workout in receiving some high- speed code at an “informal run.”
Borsody’s station sending operator had punched up a tape, and his receiving operator got up and let McElroy sit down in his chair and type down the copy. In another place Borsody says that Ted made an accurate copy at 79 wpm for 75 lines without a single error. Elsewhere Borsody says that he and Taylor verified McElroy’s [later] contest speed as 76 wpm. It contained technical material with which Ted could not have been familiar. That is phenomenal. Ted said that he could READ the code much faster than that. He also said that he knew many others also could. It was typing that limited him and them.
#2 Lavon McDonald equal with McElroy. He definitely tied with Ted McElroy in the 1939 contest. No further information on him.
#3 James B. (Jim) RICKS, W9TO, b: 1914-12-23. promoted and developed the keyboard system He first designed a keyer using vacuum tubes, (Gary Bold used one of these for 15 years beginning in 1966, when he then went to the Curtis Keyer.) Jim was a co-founder of the CFO club and must have been a high-speed man himself. No information on his background.
#4 William (Bill) Eitel b. 1908, d. 1989. And perhaps his wife LaNeil. “On High-Speed Code.” Taken from a file of some of his letters and replies from friends and others beginning in1974.
His early radio and code learning history does not seem to be known in any detail by any correspondent now living. He was active in radio in the early 1920’s, and was familiar with the arguments between spark and CW enthusiasts in those days. He was a genius in the development of high-powered vacuum tubes and other electronics aspects, and was best known as a co-founder of the well-known Eimac Co. in 1934. He was a deep thinker. Most of the following materials are in his own words.
“The potential of Morse code for communication, using the benefits of modern equipment, expands our past ability in a manner never thought possible. Some amateurs have been and are talking together with Morse code at speeds of 80 to 100 wpm or more. These new high-speed operators accept new equipment as a means of improving their operating ability (a tool) and not as a threat to their status. It is interesting to note that the members of the 5-Star club attained their speeds using keyboards having no memory, such as we have today.
Because with our older tools we could only send so fast, is this really the upper limit of our receiving ability? Let us not resist using either better operating methods or equipment that will allow better use of the code, simply because we have some vague “romantic” thoughts about things of the past.
Have we forgotten the history of keys? Stop and think of the gains we have made in ease and speed when we went from a straight (up and down motion) key to a sideswiper, to a bug, then to a keyer! Is a keyboard something evil? Is the true measure of one’s receiving proficiency one’s ability to COPY, to “put it down” on paper? -- Copying was very important when messages were paid for and the coded message had to be recorded so the message could be given to the recipient in a form he could read and know that it was accurate.
Official government messages, diplomatic and military required accuracy. But when we see the Morse code as a means of communication between individuals, not as a means of handling business or official messages, we have a new set of circumstances and benefits, and it is no more desirable to “put it down” than it is to write down a telephone conversation word by word.
This use of the code can become a challenge both to master the code and to use the associated modern equipment available at speeds above and below 80-wpm. e. g., in a roundtable discussion one can transmit a thought while waiting for an SSB transmitter to actuate VOX. Yes, there may be some whose physical or mental limitations prevent these speeds, but the biggest deterrent is the lack of a real interest.
Once you determine to master the Morse code, I believe it will be found that practice can be as much fun as operating. The most important and final ingredient is the determination to use the keyboard, and any other useful equipment. GOOD code becomes easy at high speeds. Good spacing tends to be a problem, but one that practice can overcome.
The 5-STAR club originally required 70 wpm, but soon raised it to 80 wpm. There were four original members, but by 1974 the total had increased to ten. There must have been others also who were qualified.
(See QST November 1974 page 155 for a good photo of Bill and his wife LaNeil in an ad promoting the Ten-Tec Triton as working well with high-speed code keying input. The letterhead gives the Butro Ranch and Laboratory at Dayton, NV 89403, and was dated August 24, 1974.)
#5 Tom Alderman, W4BQF. First-person story:
“As a boy of 8 or 9 I was wondering what my Dad found so entertaining about sitting at a desk copying all those dits and dahs; but I could tell that it was something he greatly enjoyed as a CW traffic net operator.
Therefore, I didn’t start hamming with the slightest negative attitude about code and so I never generated the attitude that “I’ll never be able to do that”. In fact, copying CW is one of the great enjoyments that I get out of this hobby. It is fun.
Before I had finished my year as a Novice ham, I too was into CW traffic nets and enjoying it tremendously. So for the past 49 years (since 1951) I’ve been enjoying CW and still think of it as “fun”.
I’m still l enjoying high speeds at near 80-wpm as W3NJZ, K3TF, KB9XE and I ‘harass’ each other on Wednesday night for about an hour on 3.533 MHz. My real high-speed pal, Ira-NU2C, used to ‘challenge’ me to determine how fast I actually could read code. We found the maximum speed that I could understand and correctly respond to his questions was 144 wpm. (I am not a ‘freak’, hi, hi).
I suspect the starting key to being able to copy high speed code is one’s initial learning attitude. It may be the strongest factor. I believe that learning code has forever been talked about just like we talked about that ‘awful’ mathematics stuff in high school; therefore most potential hams start off with a ‘bad’ impression of code.
I’m pretty much convinced that there is a ‘speed hump’ that most hams (myself included) seem to have a problem exceeding. I think that speed hump range is between 45 and 60 wpm. Almost everyone I have helped get into the 60+ wpm area, has had an extremely difficult time debunking that mythical ‘negative attitude’ and actually reading faster than at that hump. I can imagine what most of them thought when I would tell them to try not to think of reading 60 wpm as something they can’t do.
Think of it as just learning a different way of talking. Because I’m convinced that QRQ CW is one, just like conversing in a second language.
How does one read CW at 80-wpm or more? -- I can honestly tell you that I have no clue! Around 50-60 wpm one no longer reads dots and dashes, they literally begin (or continue) reading words. As the speed increases, don’t think you even just read words any more, you get into the flow of the conversation and literally begin reading phrases or complete sentences.
Interestingly enough, I find that when reading over 80-wpm, I don’t even realize I’m reading code, UNLESS a major word is either badly misspelled or was really hacked up on the keyboard. I don’t concentrate on the code; I concentrate on what is being said. There is no difference in doing that, as having a Native American converse fluently in French.
CODE READERS -- It certainly bugs me that most hams think that if you’re using a keyboard and/or your running CW over 30-wpm, that you MUST be using a code reader! (I think that’s another part of the universal negative attitude about code.) Sometime around 1968-69 I began trying to copy the QSO of a guy in New York and a guy in Florida, who almost nightly held a 100-wpm one-hour-long chat. My wife (I still don’t know how she found out about them) bought me an Info-Tech Morse code reader for my birthday. At that time, I sneered at it. But when I used it, I found that when I was trying to copy the ’hump’ speeds around 55 wpm, if I missed a letter or a word, my brain would freeze up and try concentrating on deciding what word I had just missed. Therefore I was losing total concentration. But by glancing up at that code reader, I would see the missed word, my brain be quickly satisfied, and I would continue with the reading!
At the time I didn’t realize this was actually happening. However, after about a year of this, it suddenly dawned on me that I was not looking at the reader any longer and I was reading in excess of 60-wpm.
In a sense, we are pretty lucky with code readers - they copy extremely well in the speed ranges we need them to help us get over the ’speed hump’- but with the QRN on 40/80 meters, once you try to get them to consistently decode CW over about 70-wpm, they just can’t do it because of the normal band noise!”
He added, “There is a lot more to be said on this subject.”
#6 Bill Pletting KB9XE.
He was about age 35 and was enjoying personal radio communication with CB. It was real fun. His CB buddies were having weekly get-togethers just to socialize. Then he discovered that one of them was also a ham, whom he visited in his home. Bill was astonished to hear Morse code and, like many others, apparently had never heard communications in Morse code before. It fascinated and intrigued him.
Then and here he became so enthusiastic to learn it that he immediately bought a set of learning cassette tapes from Amateur Electronics Supply, a reputable and well-known company in Milwaukee, which advertised in QST. He became so “obsessed” with those dit and dah characters, that he quickly learned the sounds of the alphabet, numbers and punctuation, and within a couple of weeks he had begun to practice wherever he was when it would not disturb others. He would tap out all kinds of stuff with his finger as if using a key…. or saying them in “dits and dahs” (At home it was so bad that his wife was getting irritated!)
He was determined to do it. Apparently he did not question whether it would be either “hard” or “easy”… he just did it. So it was “easy”, because he never thought of it being “hard”. He eagerly wanted to do it and learning was enjoyable fun.
Because he started learning it as it is used, hearing it and sending it as sound patterns, he did not have to do any relearning. He was learning it in the perfect way. He was practicing it almost constantly and enjoying every minute of it. It was “easy” because it wasn’t “hard” in any way. It was something to be enjoyed and done -- that was it.
About this time he bought a ham band receiver just to be able to listen to amateur signals. Meanwhile he also prepared for the technical questions and regulations in the US license examination. So, within a month he took and easily passed the 5-wpm code text and then the written test, and soon received his first license - as a Novice.
Now Bill got a transceiver and went on the air using code actively in all QSO’s. But also when he was away from the radio, he just tapped out the code with his finger as he had been doing before. He knew he needed to build up his code speed to be able to read most signals. He did this so well that within a year of getting his Novice license, he took and successfully passed the Extra Class license (20-wpm) exam.
Now with total access to all the ham bands he tried RTTY and some other digital transmission methods, but absolutely nothing could hold his fancy like Morse code did. He was also discovering that the more you practice doing a thing the right way, the better you get at it.
Higher speeds were a constant challenge. He still kept hearing stations that were too fast to understand, and he wanted to understand everything he heard. These were like a horseman’s spur jabbed into his side. He kept telling himself, “I’ve just gotta read that.” This was the incentive that drove him onward.
During this period, a number of new build-it-yourself kits came out, including some Heathkits. One was the Heathkit Ultra-Pro CW Keyboard, which came out in 1983, and he built several of these -- he also made several for his friends.
Along the way a number of high-speed operators helped him -- W4BQF Tom Alderman, W0GHX Ray Larson, W9TO Jim Ricks, K9AMC Christ C. Kovacheff, KU2D Daniel E. Silsona (deceased), K0PFX Melvin L. Whitten, and others. So in only about 4 years from when he got his first ticket, he reached the 80 wpm speed range, and has pursued it ever since. In short, he “ took off and flew.”
Since that time, like Tom Alderman and others, he welcomes any newcomer and tries to help him get into the higher speed ranges.
#7 Harry W. Lewis W7JWJ (b.: 1923-02-02) is another highly skilled old timer. (The material here was gleaned from WorldRadio Aug. 1991 p. 56, and March 1993 pp. 31,32. and a number of personal letters. Sometimes things are paraphrased to bring out the basics.)
He got interested in ham radio in High School when a friend’s transmitter penetrated the school movie sound system. It “hooked” him. He found the two Morse codes [American and International] printed in a physics book and learned both of them all by himself. He does not seem to particularly “love” the code, but it constituted a challenge to him. As long as he has felt a challenge, he has been driven to it.
He was having a health problem, and he saw learning the code as a way, which could to help him recover his health. Learning the code to this degree of skill was not easy for him. Along with this he decided to become a part of the magic world of radio, so when he finished high school (about 1940) he entered a radio and telegraph school to learn the code really well, because it seemed to be a prerequisite to progress.
At this school the better students competed one against another to become head of the class. An attractive young lady student paralleled his speed at 45 wpm. With this challenge he pushed himself still harder by long (up to as much as six) hours of daily practice.
After finishing school he spent some years in the military service as a flying radio operator and instructor. Then he entered the commercial world of radio broadcasting and TV. Over the years he worked at nine different radio stations, three TV stations, a telephone company, a computer center and several other places. This gave him a broad range of experience.
Since 1946, while doing his various regular jobs, he found time to teach beginning amateur radio classes, teaching the code, technical matters and the regulations. He helped a total of some 3,500 students to obtain their amateur licenses. He readily admits that he loves teaching Ham radio.
But he observed that over this long period the average age of applicants gradually increased by 15 years and it was taking longer and longer to teach them the code. To attract high-speed code operators and learn the secrets of how they gained that skill, he started giving code contests at various hamfests.
This wasn’t just for the fun of it -- he wanted to learn more and better teaching methods. He applied what he was learning to his own practice and he began to approach the 100-wpm rate for copying. He anticipated that the same things that helped him would also help the students. But he was disappointed to discover that it did NOT help them to improve very much.
He researched books on the psychology of learning, etc., and found there are five fundamental factors involved if one expects to have success in teaching. Presumably they would also apply to learning to copy code:
1) First and foremost, the student must be strongly self-motivated. But the students did not seem to be convinced of this.
2) Diet. The over-consumption of sugar, pre-processed food and meat products seemed always to impede the learning process. [Note that Candler had said much the same thing many years before.].
3) Exercise (such as push-ups, running, etc.) before and after practice periods [Candler also agreed here, but in his day the cramped telegraphers’ working area, with little sunlight and little or no fresh air circulation, plus long hours, were then common problems.]
4) Correct methods of practice. Successful code learning results in the individual copying totally by subconscious mental activity. That does not occur until the mind has been properly trained. [Lewis was aiming at copying ability, not just reading understanding.] Other factors involved the shape of the code pulses, the rise and decay times of the code signal envelopes (the dits and dahs), the frequency (pitch) of the tone and its timbre, the adjacent vowel and consonant combinations, etc., to optimize the impression to our ears.
When asked in 1991 what it is like to copy at very high speeds he replied “at 75 to 85-wpm there is absolute concentration, almost to a state of hypnosis.” When asked if he could start copying immediately at 75-wpm, he said: “NO! I would have to prepare myself psychologically first, and that takes from a few minutes to as much as 45.” He then was asked if he thought there is an upper limit to receiving speed, he said:
”It is definitely above 120-wpm, because his friend Jerry Ferrell had been clocked at 90% complete reading at 125-wpm.”
Harry was certified in 1988 by the ARRL when he copied at 76-wpm. Now with advancing age (70) he feels he is slowing down somewhat.
#8 Edward (Ed) Hart, Jr. b. 1909, and George Hart, 3-1/2 years younger.
In the early 1920’s their father Edward Hart, Sr., was a professor of chemistry at Lafayette College in Easton PA. The family lived in a house on the campus, which was owned by the College. When their father died in 1931 they had to move. They moved to a farm about five miles south of Easton near the little unincorporated village of Raubsville. The farm had 400 acres of woods and meadows in two valleys near the river. Ed first got his two required licenses - his amateur operator’s license and separate station license 3NF. - when he was 15 in 1925.
When their Father died he was operating the family printing business in Easton and continued with that for some years. Much later he moved to Philipsburg NJ as W2ZVW and served as SCM of Northern NJ in 1958 - 1959. Later he moved to Albuquerque NM as W5RE and served as SCM there in 1973-1976, and finally in 1978 moved to near Bonita Springs FL as N4KB, where his ”little” brother George and family often visited him in the summer. Ed must have been a quite fast operator. He died in 1988.
George Hart, Ed’s younger brother, was born 1 Nov. 1913. Now W1NJM, George tells his history with Morse code as a first-person story. It has been rearranged and sometimes paraphrased.
It was in 1925, after Ed got his first Amateur license, that his little brother George got curious. What was this that Ed was doing and having so much fun with? Was it some sort of new language he was using?
George says “I admired my big brother Ed. He was my ideal. He was 15, 3-1/2 years older than me - I was then 11. I began to learn the code like a baby learns to talk, by listening to my brother operate and picking up the ‘code’ by ‘osmosis’, recognizing and imitating the more frequent sounds I heard. I just sort of drifted into it by listening.
“I wasn’t aware of any such thing as “dots” and “dashes”, but only of sound symbols with meaning. I quickly learned the sounds of his frequent CQ’s, his call 3NF and special procedural signals such as AR K, DE and R (all still used), and the now-obsolete U (used for foreign calls before US calls were given prefixes W or K). I also absorbed other sounds, as sounds with meaning. I must have been born with a key my mouth.
“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.
“It was when I was 14 in 1928 that I clocked myself at 34 wpm, plain language. I paid for that quite some time later because of the strain in mis-using a straight key and got a “glass arm” (a painful form of paralysis). But I had discovered I had mastered the Morse code and was able to carry on a conversation, communicating just like Ed did.
“Finally my brother Ed bullied me into getting a temporary license (obtained by mail) in 1930. The code was not a problem, but I barely passed the written theory test with a grade of 70. I wasn’t even capable of building my own station yet. . Ed took me to Philadelphia in 1931 and I obtained my first Amateur Class license W3AMR (good for three years, renewable subject to proof of use).
“In 1932 I attended Penn State U and graduated in 1936. “We never used the call W3AMR until after Father died and we had moved out of the College property to ‘the farm’ (‘ole 66’). W3AMR had a great CW ‘swing’ to it, and I learned to love it. But on the farm we had no A.C. power, so we used batteries. Ed set up his station at the printing plant we owned in Easton. In 1932, Ed got a second-hand generator for the farm and set it up in an outbuilding. Unfortunately it caught fire one day and destroyed several outbuildings and almost burned the house, too.
“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 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 may learn in different ways.] Learning conversational CW is more like learning to talk than it is to learning another language. It is far easier if you don’t need to learn how to pronounce strange new kinds of sounds, 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.”
“I was given a Vibroplex key in 1929 and in my late teens and early 20’s I could send almost like a machine at 45-wpm.” But first with a straight key and later with a bug he developed that painful “glass arm.” When keyboards came out he found he could send quite comfortably with two fingers.
“I never learned touch-typing, so this is a handicap for me with a keyboard. With two-fingers I can type up to 55-wpm. That is also my best speed of copying a printed text, because I must keep shifting my eyes back and forth from text to keyboard quite rapidly. This back and forth eye movement also promotes more errors, as I grow older. I did copy at 55-wpm for one minute out of five in an AARS contest. I can read, but not copy, at 60-wpm, but get only some words at 70-wpm or more.
“In my opinion achieving high-speed CW is a natural progression, if you learn it right in the beginning and continue to practice it.” For receiving, George has for many years been able to read code up to 60-wpm, but now he can only send at about 40, and so his QSO’s today are rarely over that speed.
George worked at ARRL Headquarters for 40 years, starting as second control operator at the new W1AW station on 22 Aug. 1938, and ending as Communications Manager in charge of all on-the-air activities sponsored by the ARRL and its affiliated clubs on 1 Nov. 1978. After retirement he moved back to “the farm”.
Most of the time since 1957 he has actively promoted high-speed reception by putting weekly speed-practice periods and occasional qualifying test sessions on the air, and awarding certificates of proficiency. First he did this from a small club he formed, with practice and testing sessions advertised in the QST.
ARRL had no part in it other than some notices.
The club fell apart later and some members of the Society of Wireless Pioneers (SOWP) gave their name support to it, but otherwise did nothing.
His transmissions were originally made using a tape puller at speeds ranging from 20 wpm to 70 wpm. Some of his transmissions in later years were made from his brother’s station in Florida. Only recently has he dropped back to one session a week and he no longer issues certificates. Now he rarely sends over 30 - 35 wpm. He feels he could maybe copy at 40-wpm.
He feels that “personal aggrandizement” is one of the basic motivations of the Amateur radio pursuits, especially DX-ing and contesting. We do what we do “because we enjoy it”, and some people do it purely for itself.
“I came into contact with William C. Smith, K6DYX, Monterey CA, professor of electronics at the US Navy Graduate School in Monterey. That was in the days of home computers. He urged me to “go computer” with my code practice sessions, much against my inclinations. Not only that but he insisted on giving me his older Apple II in 1988, and a set of personally spelled-out instructions for using it. He also visited me in person several times after that. I was a rotten pupil, but he was an excellent instructor and very patient. I still am using it.”
#9 John F. Rhilinger, KC1MI, is able to read at 80-wpm, and to copy at 70. In 1992 I asked him 22 questions, each of which he answered, plus several nice letters. Here is the essence of what he says was his experience.
His father W1QQS was a close friend of Ted McElroy, the long-time world Speed Champion record-holder, who frequently visited them. John knew him as Uncle Ted. By age 6 John became interested in Morse code and from them at that time he learned the code up to a rate of 10 – 15 wpm, but did not get a license.
In his later years when he had become a ham and reached a speed of 30 wpm, he began to practice sleep-learning. (Sleep-learning was a method successfully tried by some Germans in the early 1920’s.) Generally he practiced it up to four hours each night. He used a tape recorder to send continuous code materials which he had previously heard and recorded at various speeds, and then speeded up ultimately to record the 60 wpm range or higher by the recorder’s play-back speed. This seems to have been the main way he reached the higher speeds. He was also actively hamming six hours a day and probably aiming at the higher speeds he heard.
He has not sensed any loss of rest during the sleep-learning at night.
He does not need any prepping-up to start reading at high speeds. He just starts. Typical misspellings and other such errors cause him no problems in reading. He does not lose out.
#10 Katashi Noshe, KH6IJ, was a long-time ham, a well-known DX man and code teacher. What his top speed was is apparently not recorded, but he worked up into the 60 wpm range in DX, and his students advanced rapidly from zero to 30 - 35 wpm in a few weeks with no problems. In 1959 he wrote, “Any DX-er worth his salt is good for at least 60 wpm. He gears his speed to what comes back.”
#11 Jerry A. Ferrell WB7VKI (CFO # 760) is another very high-speed operator. (over 100-wpm with whom I had extensive correspondence in 1992, and later).
He was born in 1927. In 1945 at age 18 he joined the US Coast Guard. His aptitude tests showed he should make a good radio operator. He was assigned to the six-month radio course at Atlantic City, where the goal was 20 wpm of ciphered 5-letter groups. Very little standard English text was practiced toward the end. He was not too good at that. Otherwise he was at the top of the class.
The course plan at the CG school was to start out at 5 wpm (apparently using very slow code characters - far below our being able to recognize them as patterns of sound (which occurs in the range of 10-13 wpm). The class progressed faster by a stepwise increment each week until reaching 20-wpm.
After that school he started out on US Coast Guard ships. He left the Coast Guard for a part of 1948 and 1949 and went into Rail Road telegraphy. He spent one month at their telegraph school to learn the American Morse code and then went on temporary assignments. Later in 1949 he returned to the US CG and stayed there until his retirement in 1966.
During various assignment in the CG he copied normal English messages at 20-25 wpm, and press broadcasts for the ship’s newspaper at 35-40 wpm. He was so good that sometimes the shore station operators would punch tapes to send to him at 50-60 wpm to try to trip him up -- but he did not miss anything, and they wondered what was going on.
Then for a period of 12 years, 1966 to 1978, he worked at different occupations away from radio or telegraph activity. In early 1978 he got a ham license. In May that year he visited the Vancouver Ham Fair. On entering the building he heard code signals and located their source. It was a code speed demonstration for a crowd of spectators being given by Harry Lewis who was using a keyboard, a TV monitor and a meter showing sending speed.
Jerry asked for a try, starting at 30-wpm and increasing by 5-wpm increments. He copied perfectly up through 50-wpm. At that time he became friends with Harry Lewis, who from then on lent him equipment and help, and encouraged him to increase his speed capability. So he bought a reel to reel tape recorder and a keyboard and made 50 large reels of 1/4 inch tape at speeds ranging from 50 to 75, 60 to 80 and 70 to 90 wpm for practice. Later he made more tapes with 5-wpm speed increments between 50 & 80, etc. He also has a 75-wpm & 100-wpm “warm-up” tape that makes the others seem rather slow.
I sent him a list of questions, which he answered, in considerable detail. His answers are:
1) He rightly suspects that the main reason for the increase in the number of high-speed operators is the widespread use of keyboards for sending.
2a) He is quite correct that reading code and copying code are two different kinds of operations - copying takes far more time to learn. This is because you must receive the code with your ears, process it through your brain, then it goes on down to your fingers to the paper or typewriter.
2b) He says he feels no strain while reading, but high speed copying is stressful for him. It is because of this that he feels that he must practice at least an hour each day for five months before a contest. He must also get psyched up immediately before the contest. He feels that it would be so stressful for an operator to copy continuously at 60-wpm for 10 - 12 hours every day, that it would be almost impossible.
2c) He says he is sure that the secret of learning to copy at higher speeds is to start out listening to and trying to copy 10 wpm - or more -, faster than you are comfortable with, and then dropping back to a slower speed. It is like driving a car at 90 mph and then slowing down to 80 mph seems slow.
3) He says that to him International Morse code at 75-wpm or more sounds like “chicken fat frying in a hot griddle.” To start reading it he has to make up his mind to break into it and begin concentrating on words and phrases.
4) Then so long as he consciously maintains his concentration, he can continue to read.
What does he concentrate on, and how does he do it? -- He visualizes it as something like this: “If I am listening to a news broadcast on the radio while reading the daily paper, one or the other will have my attention. While I focus on one, I am conscious of the presence of the other, but I am not fully aware of its contents - in fact it may be more or less gibberish to me.” This is an inexact parallel, but it is this snapping of attention to the one or to the other that makes the difference between reading and treating it as ”noise.”
Hard or unusual words, etc., are sometimes difficult, but generally do not cause dropouts by destroying overall concentration. He may be conscious of missing something (due to misspelling or a sending error, etc.) and he may be momentarily puzzled, but not for long, as he continues on. His attention is on understanding - that keeps him going. Long words do not cause any problems.
5) He does not know whether there is a limitation on the speed of understanding, but thinks there surely must be.
6) He has always been able to listen to the code or send it while doing other things -typing at moderate speeds, conversing with others, re-tuning, etc. While he was a shipboard operator and returning with others from shore leave after being still somewhat inebriated, they would sometimes try to trip him up by sending words spelled backwards, etc. to him. But he did not trip up.
7) Although he can read and copy American Morse up to around 30-40 wpm it does not sound right to him with a CW tone. He does enjoy reading it occasionally from taped sounders, however. He never practiced it at higher speeds.
#12 Frederick M. Ryan W3NIZ (b. 1932-01-20)
In 1942 when he was 10, as a Christmas gift, Fred’s father gave him a toy telegraph set which could be used to send between two stations. It used a buzzer, a clicker (simulating a sounder) or a lamp. There is no doubt as to why he was given that. His Father was a telegrapher on the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie RR, his Grandfather was a telegrapher on the Pennsylvania RR, and an uncle on the Baltimore and Ohio RR. He taught himself the letters and numbers by memorizing them at a very low speed.
After WW-II when ham radio was again allowed, he decided to improve his code ability and take the exam. He practiced on his telegraph set and also mentally put advertisements in the newspapers or posted in the trolley cars into code (while he rode into town). His Father was not much help here because he knew only the old American Morse.
He took the 13-wpm exam in 1946 and failed. At that time one had to wait six months before trying again. So, during that interim he practiced more, as he had done previously, and remembers that his sending speed got up to 18 – 20-wpm. Early the next year he took the exam again and just barely passed it -- barely, not highly successfully.
Since he expresses himself in terms of “dots” and “dashes”, he probably followed his father’s approach in copying and thinking, and practiced with “dots” and “dashes”, rather than in terms of sound, as ”dits” and “dahs”. Whether he learned it by sound or visually, he says he was sort of “stuck” at the test speed of 13-wpm for a while. At that time he had little opportunity for speed building because he was busy with high school studies. Also since that was as fast as most of his contacts, he felt no interest or incentive to go any faster.
In the early 1950’s when he was in the Army he worked with a straight key up into the 15 – 17 wpm range
Sometime in the 1960’s his first real improvement began when he started listening to the ARRL code practice transmissions in preparation for taking the Extra class exam. He knew from experience that a person tends to do worse under test conditions, so he waited until he could copy at 30-wpm before being tested at 20. Of course he passed.
On into the 1970’s his comprehension and sending speeds increased slowly to about 40-wpm, when he used a keyer for sending and was no longer copying it all down. In the mid 1970’s, when good keyboards became available, he heard some fellows sending over 80-wpm, but he could understand very little of what they were saying. He did think that it would be fun to do. But he thought, “They are really in a different league than I am and what they are doing is way above my ability. I am now busy with my job, so I had little time to try it.
“When I retired in 1992 I finally had leisure to spend on CW, so I bought a keyboard and started sending at 45 wpm.” Then he heard some guys holding QSO's at over 60-wpm, and “I decided I would see if I could improve to that level.
“It took a lot of desire and practice, but over the past three years (from 1997 to the end of 2000) I have gone from 45-wpm to over 70-wpm. I intend to keep it up and improve more. It has been a lot of fun, and I have met some great people also who acted as mentors to me.”
In his own experience he says he finds the way his brain functions is like this: “Below about 55-wpm I construct the words from letters, and so comprehension is cumbersome. Especially below about 25-wpm I find that my attention span in remembering the slowly incoming letters and constructing words from them is really tedious. But above 55-wpm my brain starts paying little attention to the letters, and the words just ”pop” into my head. Even at 90-wpm I am still getting some words as words and putting them together to form thoughts. 90-wpm seems to be about my limit to do that, and I believe that to comprehend over 90-wpm I will have to change the way in which my brain operates.” Further practice and time has raised his comprehension speed to over 100-wpm.
