On 5/24/2013 6:26 AM, Carey Magee wrote:
Hi. Possibly a statement regarding the opening of the railroad line he was there at?
He was in DC, and I believe the telegraph line was at least partially Federally funded and not directly connected to any railroad, however the Annapolis end was in a B&O building. I remember seeing a pen-and-ink drawing of the reception of the message years ago.
When you think of it, I wonder if he even thought of the impact Morse code would have on society back then.
If life were fair, he would have been thinking about the impact of the Vail code. Sam's plan was to translate a message into a sequence of numbers using a dictionary he worked to come up with, and then send the numbers. The receive op used a "un-dictionary" to recreate the message. Some historians suggest that in fact, he downplayed the electromechanical part of the telegraph and saw his "dictionary" as the true genius. Sam was a somewhat vain fellow and did not take kindly to the advice of others.
Alfred Vail was probably the first to come up with the idea of a code of marks on the tape to denote letters, and just use the code to spell out words, and that idea finally prevailed over Sam's dictionary. Early ops rather quickly discovered they could decode the message just by listening to the click-clack of the receiving mechanism. For a period of time, Sam pursued a cause that messages copied "by ear" were less reliable than those read off of the tape. I think he even took someone to court over it.
The ring tone on my smartyfone sends the name of the caller if in my phone book, or the number if not, at 25 WPM. Interesting responses from folks when standing in a line. :-)
73, Fred K6DGW - Northern California Contest Club - CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013 - www.cqp.org ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
