[GreenKeys] Point to Point vs. Marine

Sat Dec 25 23:58:42 EST 2021

    Thank you very much for the personal reply. It is very 
difficult at this late date to get reliable or perhaps I should 
say authentic information about operations.
     I know RCA offered telephone service because I heard the 
setting up calls to Hawaii. RCA was evidently a little cheaper 
than AT&T. RCA used simple inversion for privacy while AT&T used 
what they called a "shuffler" a box that broke up the voice 
spectrum into about five bands and juggled them with and without 
inversion. You could tell it was speech but not distinguish 
words. OTOH, I could listen in to the RCA calls on my Super Pro 
which was selective enough to pick out independent sidebands  and 
with some modification was quite stable. I also heard RCA in New 
York setting up calls to South America, particularly Rio Dejenero 
(sp).
    I heard a strange sort of humming, buzzing signal which I 
think was the multiplexed synchronous teleprinter signals but was 
never able to find out. They were on several frequencies. Since 
the San Francisco area was a busy one for all sorts of radio I 
can't be certain these were from RCA.
    The rules about calls seem to have been changed many times 
over the years. Mayes, in his book, gives the calls used for 
Alexanderson machines at several locations. According to this 
WSO, which shows up in McElroy's biography, was an Alexanderson 
machine at Marion Mass.
    I don't know why this stuff is so fascinating but it is.
    FWIW, I learned American Morse as a sort of challenge and 
used to work a retired railroad operator using it. I can't read 
it any more. I have a couple of sounders, one in a resonator. 
They are LOUD. I drive this thing with an Instructograph machine. 
I have pretty much a full set of Continental tapes but American 
Morse tapes seem to be remarkably rare so I have non. I am not an 
expert in any kind of Morse but work on it every day. Reading 
tone and reading a sounder are quite different. The ops who could 
read both kinds of code and both kinds of sound were quite 
remarkable.

On 12/25/2021 5:51 PM, Richard Dillman wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Dec 25, 2021 at 1:29 PM Richard Knoppow 
> <1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com <mailto:1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com>> wrote:
> 
>          I think we need to distinguish between the marine radio
>     operation of KPH and the RCA Communications point to point
>     service which was also run from Bolinas Point. The marine
>     service
>     through KPH was telegraph with later some RTTY to ships at sea
>     while the RCA Communications service ran some large number of
>     circuits to Pacific Rim countries. KPH was connected via wire
>     telegraph. Richard Dillman could supply details. The messages to
>     be sent and received from ships would be relayed by telegraph. I
>     suspect these circuits were machine code both ways and later
>     Teletype.
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Quite correct, the distinction between the marine service and the 
> point to point service is important to keep in mind.
> 
> The American Marconi Company came to the coast of Marin county 
> north of San Francisco to build the point to point transmit 
> station at Bolinas.  The corresponding receive station was built 
> at Marshall(s).  The station was placed in service in February 
> 1914.  The transmitter was the standard Marconi rotary gap rated 
> at about 230kW.  The call sign was KET.
> 
> https://www.radiomarine.org/point-to-point/bolinas-high-power 
> <https://www.radiomarine.org/point-to-point/bolinas-high-power>
> 
> In 1920 RCA replaced the Marconi transmitter with two 
> Alexanderson alternators on about 26kc (high for an alternator 
> but necessary at Bolinas due to the short antenna) with 200kW 
> output each.  The KET call sign was retained.    They were so 
> proud of the alternators that they placed a bronze plaque on the 
> transmitter building.
> 
> https://www.radiomarine.org/radio-archaeology/alexanderson 
> <https://www.radiomarine.org/radio-archaeology/alexanderson>
> 
> RCA was formed, as we know, to absorb the interests of American 
> Marconi and thereby prevent that company from obtaining monopoly 
> use of the Alexanderson alternator.  It's true that the 
> Alexanderson alternators were dead reliable.  But the reason that 
> alternator installations were discontinued was the advent of HF 
> as a revenue generating technology.
> 
> The the point to point service, from the beginning until its 
> demise in 1973, no actual operating was done at the transmit or 
> receive stations.  This was controlled at the CRO (Central Radio 
> Office) in San Francisco (or the corresponding city for other 
> stations).  Outgoing messages were transferred to Wheatstone tape 
> at the CRO and sent by wire line to key the appropriate 
> transmitter (the alternator or, later, the HF transmitter aimed 
> at a particular city).  Incoming messages were received on 
> diversity receivers (one of which we have restored) and activated 
> tone keyers at the receive site.  These tones were sent to the 
> CRO by wire line where they were recorded on ink recorders.  
> Later, then FSK replaced Morse, the same process was followed 
> using Baudot.  Unique to the point to point service, on HF each 
> frequency had its own call sign rather than an overall station 
> call sign.
> 
> In contrast, in the marine service all operations were (and are) 
> handled at the receive site.  Outgoing messages were received by 
> land line Morse (later by teleprinter) from the CRO and placed in 
> the message rack for transmission.  When a calling ship had 
> traffic traffic on hand the operator retrieved the message from 
> the rack and sent it manually, remotely keying the transmitters 
> in Bolinas.  Incoming messages were also received manually and 
> typed on a mill or, later, into a message handling system.  
> Delivery was through the CRO by teleprinter or bicycle messenger 
> except in the case of a sea letter message.  These were mailed by 
> station personnel (I have one in my collection).  These days they 
> are delivered via email.
> 
> WX and PX was received at the receive station on punched 5 level 
> tape.  A Baudot to Morse converter was used to key the KPH 
> transmitters from the 5 level tape.  Today we send PX and WX 
> obtained via the Internet.
> 
> Our order wire between Bolinas and Point Reyes is a land line 
> teletype circuit which we think may be one of the few remaining, 
> certainly in this application.
> 
> We are unaware that point to point service handled voice 
> telephone circuits although the station did provide broadcast 
> service for the OWI during WWI, one transmitter having the call 
> KRCA.  The AT&T station next to RCA handled point to point voice 
> circuits as did the station at Half Moon Bay/Palo Alto (marine 
> call KFS).
> 
> VY 73,
> 
> RD
> 
> 
> Richard Dillman
> Maritime Radio Historical Society
> https://www.radiomarine.org <https://www.radiomarine.org>
> 

-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL