[GreenKeys] Couple Teletype Presentation Pictures

Duncan Brown duncanancy at earthlink.net
Mon May 16 13:22:16 EDT 2016


On 16-May-16 01:39, Paul Birkel wrote:
> Is that the reason that we still have military message formats (e.g., USMTF)
> in which SCREAMING // CAPS // IS THE STYLE // STILL -- blame it on 5-level
> code equipment in-use?
>
Some early teletypewriters (aka "printing telegraphs) of the 19th 
century had both upper & lower case.  But Western Union was a major user 
and they were replacing telegraph circuits with the TTYs. Since the 
printing telegraphs were interfacing with regular (Morse) telegraph 
circuits that only used upper case, the printing telegraphs had no need 
for two cases.  When Emile Baudot came up with his digital system, 
staying with just one case allowed him to encode the alphabet in only 5 
bits.

So blame Morse code (of the 1850s) not the TTYs of the 1900s for the 
all-caps messages.

(personally, I prefer the all-caps for messages, but maybe its because I 
grew up with them)

Have fun,

Duncan
K2OEQ


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