[CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest Digest, Vol 63, Issue 37

[Doug Grant]

On 3/14/08, Zack Widup <w9sz at prairienet.org> wrote:

> The original purpose of Morse and all voice modes was to be copied by ear.
> The original purpose of Baudot RTTY and all digital modes after that was
> to be copied by machine.
>
> If someone wants to try to copy CW with a machine, best of luck to them.
> It just wasn't intended that way in the first place and I for one won't do
> it.

Actually, Morse was widely copied by machine in the early days, and
old Samuel FB himself intended for a machine to do the dirty work. A
solenoid with a pen connected was employed to print the dots and
dashes on a moving piece of paper, which was then translated to text
by "operators" after the fact. Morse was intended to be read by eye,
not ear.

It was nearly by accident that it was discovered that the dots and
dashes could be copied by ear and translated in real time, saving the
visual translation step and defining a whole new skill. And like most
skills, competitions arose to see who was best at it.

Copying voice by ear ought to be easy, but I still make mistakes
copying some callsigns.

I won't try to copy RTTY by ear though.

73,

Doug K1DG