[CQ-Contest] Thanks, .......Boston and Maine visit. a little history lesson

[Dick Frey - K4XU]

Mr. Marconi would not have used "IE" or any other of those "ditty" 
American Morse characters.

Rather, he would have used the "Continental Code". It was developed over 
"on the continent" (Europe) ca. 1844 by the Germans and Austrians who 
thought Morse's code of dots, double dots, short and long dashes was 
inefficient and disorganized. Germans can't stand that. This explains 
why the letter C, less frequent in Deutsch, is longer than it would be 
if developed by English-speakers. It is what we use today, now called 
International Morse. American Morse was used by the railroads and 
Western Union until 1866 when the new trans-Atlantic cable forced use of 
the continental code for all international traffic. American Morse 
survived on the US railroad's wire lines until the early 1950's.

Dick Frey, k4xu    ...amateur Morse historian.



Bill Coleman sprach:

On Aug 8, 2006, at 6:24 PM, Ken Alexander wrote:


>> Nothing is mentioned of whether a QSL card was issued,
>> and I believe Mr. Marconi was operating SO1SG (Single
>> Op, 1 Spark Gap) at the time!
>  
>

And he had no receiver, so he couldn't see if the frequency was in  
use or not, regardless of whether o he transmitted "QRL?", "?" or  
"IE" ('C' in continental Morse)....

Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
             -- Wilbur Wright, 1901



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