Brainerd Area Amateur Radio Club
July 27, 2000 Meeting
Brainerd Area Amateur Radio
Club
July 27, 2000 Meeting
The Brainerd Area Amateur Radio Club July 27th, 2000 met at the Brainerd Public Library. The 8 PM, presentation was given by past BAARC Vice President Bill Ingmundson WBØMVE. Bill gave a talk about CW, teletype, and our evolution to digital.
Photo by Mark Persons WØMH
Bill is holding a telegraph sounder that was used in a Western Telegraph office for almost 50 years. He restored it to it's former glory with many hours of hard work and patience.
Bill explained that Samuel Morse got the idea of sending messages on wires in 1837 after reading a newspaper article on how an electromagnet could respond to an electric current. It wasn't long before the first Trans-Atlantic cable was strung to send messages between Great Britain and the United States. The cable lasted two weeks before it failed. It wasn't long before another cable was run across the Atlantic Ocean and later the Pacific Ocean to Australia. Around the turn of the 20th century (1900), radio replaced copper wires at the dominate means of communications around the world.
One of the communications problems involved a standard for dots and dashes (Morse Code). There was a Continental Morse Code and an International Morse Code. The one we know as Morse Code, as Amateur Radio Operators, is the International Morse Code. Europeans used Continental Morse. The dots and dashes, on 21 characters, were different including the length of the dashes. There were, in fact, three different lengths of the dash. Nowadays, even Russian hams use the International Morse Code to communicate world wide.
Note: One point that I especially liked was that the Ø in Continental Morse Code was one long dash rather than a series of five dashes. (Mark WØMH).
It certainly was an enlightening experience for all who attended the meeting. The next meeting is a picnic at Loren Thompson Park in Baxter, MN on August 26th, 2000. The club will hold a "fox hunt" for a mystery transmitter and have a great time. Hope you can attend.
This page was last updated 12/19/2006