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ken scharf · February 17th 07, 02:17 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.homebrew

wrote:
On Feb 16, 2:00?am, (Geoffrey S. Mendelson) wrote:
ken scharf wrote:
Wonder if A2 operation with USB tone modulated code would be legal on
these bands?

Bear in mind Morse code was designed to be used in a mechanical punched
tape sending device. It was never meant to be sent or received by hand.
It was just by accident that an operator found out he could copy the message
directly into his head by listening to the sound of the pen.

Ahem...small disagreement there. Morse's original "code" was
all numeric and the receiver was an inked trace on paper tape.

Vail, not Morse, replaced the tape sender with a hand key, and dropped
the pen from the receiver.

Alfred Vail's family was Morse's financial benefactor. The Vail
locomotive works tried to get the ink pen receiver to work
reliably and couldn't. At the same time Morse was having
trouble organizing his all-number "code" to cover enough
English language common phrases. According to the Vail
family website information, Alfred Vail suggested to Morse that
the whole English alphabet should be part of the "code."
Alfred suggested copying the frequency of letters of a printer's
type case as a way to make the most-used characters take
the least time to send.

Eventually, long after the hand key and acoustic "sounder"
were in common use, the ink-printed-on-paper-tape (or drum)
came back for very long circuits such as under-ocean lines.

Like "diHydrogen monOxide", it could become popular on the Internet.

Good stuff! I have a couple glasses of dihydrogen monoxide
every day! :-)

I even shower with it! :-)

Also the "Morse" code invented by the man of the same name is NOT the
same cypher (it's NOT really a code!) that we hams use over the air. WE
use what's actually called the "international radio telegraph" cypher
(code). True Morse has characters based on dots, dashes, long dashes,
and variable spaces! Also as sent over the land line the operator had
to listen for the gap between clicks NOT the sound of the clicks! Try
that folks!