TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse

Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse

Wesrock@aol.com
Fri, 15 Apr 2005 19:40:14 EDT

In a message dated Fri, 15 Apr 2005 23:33:07 +1000, Colin
<colin@sutton.wow.aust.com> writes:

> The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between 93 year old
> telegraph operator transmitting morse code to an 82 year old with a
> manual typewriter, and youngsters sending a text message. The text
> message was received 18 seconds after the message was already on
> paper.

> http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html

> Regards,

> Colin Sutton

This is not surprising to anyone who has worked with capable Morse
operators.

My first experience with them when I was writing the play-by-play for
University of Oklahoma football games with a Morse operator beside me
sending the copy as I wrote it. (Newspapers carried play-by-play
accounts in their early editions up to the deadline for that edition
in the days before there was television coverage of everything. Later
editions, of course, would carry a regular story.)

Later, when I was a newsman for United Press in Dallas, which had
responsibility for many college football games throughout the
Southwest, we were always delighted when a Morse operator showed up
with this key and sounder. For most of the games Western Union used
teletypewriters with just ordinary key punchers, not usually very
skilled. But the Morse operators they sometimes sent were always
skilled press operators -- even at that time, in the early and middle
1950s, declining in numbers. In the very competitive news business,
their usuable output was well ahead of Western Union teletypewriter
operators.

Wes Leatherock
wesrock@aol.com

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