Ham Fisted Herman?
Over at a financial forum...
StJL – "Gene Munster is an idiot!!! first he announced that we will see an Apple car by 2020 which is possible but makes no sense in the context of Apple's philosophy and last night he was putting a valuation of $250B on Amazon AWS itself. They had "sales" of $2.5B last quarter! I guess 25x sales is a good number to start… Why do these guys still have jobs?"
We Nattered: "Oh you have no idea, my buddy Ham and I hooked Munster and PJ up with a radio based telemetry system. Here is internal video of Munster thinking he knows what the hell it does and attempting to operate the system based on what he thinks it does, absolutely hysterical…"
Scottmi - "Naybob – 10-4 good buddy, or as your friend Ham would say – 73s! ;-)
p.s. I just upgraded to "General" last weekend, as my boys passed the exams for their Technician licenses. Loved the Munster clip!"
The Nattering One muses...
In the days of yore, telegraphs provided wire based communication and Morse Code was the language. In Morse Code, letters were represented by combinations of long and short light or sound signals. Hence, a series of dots and dashes much like binary code was the programming language of the day.
Like a musician or dancer, good rhythm was the mark of a good telegraph operator. Some non military operators in the early days were less than rhythmic. These rhythmically challenged operators sounded "ham-fisted", hence the origin of the term "ham radio".
Much like CB codes from the 70's & 80's: What's your 20? (location) and 10-4 (acknowledged), why say or spell it out when you can truncate and save bandwidth?
"73" is from the "Phillips Code", a series of numeric message codes representing oft utilized phrases and designed to reduce transmission time on telegraph systems which utilized Morse Code.
Hence, one theory for the origin of 73 goes like this... A=1, B=2, C=3 etc. so G O O D B Y E = 7 15 15 4 2 25 5 = for a total of 73. Sounds plausible, upon further review...
I had to root around in the archives at bit for this one...December 1934:
Bulletin from the Navy Department Office of the Chief of Naval Operations
"It appears from a research of telegraph histories that in 1859 the telegraph people held a convention, and one of its features was a discussion as to the saving of 'line time'. A committee was appointed to devise a code to reduce standard expressions to symbols or figures. This committee worked out a figure code, from figure 1 to 92. Most of these figure symbols became obsolescent, but a few remain to this date, such as 4, which means "Where shall I go ahead?'. Figure 9 means 'wire', the wire chief being on the wire and that everyone should close their keys. Symbol 13 means 'I don't understand'; 22 is 'love and a kiss'; 30 means 'good night' or 'the end'. The symbol most often used now is 73, which means 'my compliments' and 92 is for the word 'deliver.' The other figures in between the forgoing have fallen into almost complete disuse."
A list of 1905 Telegraph signals:
1 Wait a moment
2 Important Business
3 What time is it?
4 Where shall I go ahead?
5 Have you business for me?
6 I am ready
7 Are you ready?
8 Close your key; circuit is busy
9 Close your key for priority business (Wire chief, dispatcher, etc)
10 Keep this circuit closed
12 Do you understand?
13 I understand
14 What is the weather?
15 For you and other to copy
17 Lightning here
18 What is the trouble?
19 Form 19 train order
21 Stop for a meal
22 Wire test
23 All copy
24 Repeat this back
25 Busy on another wire
26 Put on ground wire
27 Priority, very important
28 Do you get my writing?
29 Private, deliver in sealed envelope
30 No more (end)
31 Form 31 train order
32 I understand that I am to ...
33 Car report (Also, answer is paid for)
34 Message for all officers
35 You may use my signal to answer this
37 Diversion (Also, inform all interested)
39 Important, with priority on thru wire (Also, sleep-car report)
44 Answer promptly by wire
73 Best regards
88 Love and kisses
91 Superintendant's signal
92 Deliver promptly
93 Vice President and General Manager's signals
95 President's signal
134 Who is at the key?
Makes one wonder about today's programming languages, libraries, data compression techniques and algorithms. Every few years, Moore's Law crams more memory, processing power and storage capability into less space. This convenience allows for fat languages, inefficient library routines, sloppy coding techniques, memory hog apps and bloated operating systems. Amdahl's law was right.
StJL – "Gene Munster is an idiot!!! first he announced that we will see an Apple car by 2020 which is possible but makes no sense in the context of Apple's philosophy and last night he was putting a valuation of $250B on Amazon AWS itself. They had "sales" of $2.5B last quarter! I guess 25x sales is a good number to start… Why do these guys still have jobs?"
We Nattered: "Oh you have no idea, my buddy Ham and I hooked Munster and PJ up with a radio based telemetry system. Here is internal video of Munster thinking he knows what the hell it does and attempting to operate the system based on what he thinks it does, absolutely hysterical…"
Scottmi - "Naybob – 10-4 good buddy, or as your friend Ham would say – 73s! ;-)
p.s. I just upgraded to "General" last weekend, as my boys passed the exams for their Technician licenses. Loved the Munster clip!"
The Nattering One muses...
In the days of yore, telegraphs provided wire based communication and Morse Code was the language. In Morse Code, letters were represented by combinations of long and short light or sound signals. Hence, a series of dots and dashes much like binary code was the programming language of the day.
Like a musician or dancer, good rhythm was the mark of a good telegraph operator. Some non military operators in the early days were less than rhythmic. These rhythmically challenged operators sounded "ham-fisted", hence the origin of the term "ham radio".
Much like CB codes from the 70's & 80's: What's your 20? (location) and 10-4 (acknowledged), why say or spell it out when you can truncate and save bandwidth?
"73" is from the "Phillips Code", a series of numeric message codes representing oft utilized phrases and designed to reduce transmission time on telegraph systems which utilized Morse Code.
Hence, one theory for the origin of 73 goes like this... A=1, B=2, C=3 etc. so G O O D B Y E = 7 15 15 4 2 25 5 = for a total of 73. Sounds plausible, upon further review...
I had to root around in the archives at bit for this one...December 1934:
Bulletin from the Navy Department Office of the Chief of Naval Operations
"It appears from a research of telegraph histories that in 1859 the telegraph people held a convention, and one of its features was a discussion as to the saving of 'line time'. A committee was appointed to devise a code to reduce standard expressions to symbols or figures. This committee worked out a figure code, from figure 1 to 92. Most of these figure symbols became obsolescent, but a few remain to this date, such as 4, which means "Where shall I go ahead?'. Figure 9 means 'wire', the wire chief being on the wire and that everyone should close their keys. Symbol 13 means 'I don't understand'; 22 is 'love and a kiss'; 30 means 'good night' or 'the end'. The symbol most often used now is 73, which means 'my compliments' and 92 is for the word 'deliver.' The other figures in between the forgoing have fallen into almost complete disuse."
A list of 1905 Telegraph signals:
1 Wait a moment
2 Important Business
3 What time is it?
4 Where shall I go ahead?
5 Have you business for me?
6 I am ready
7 Are you ready?
8 Close your key; circuit is busy
9 Close your key for priority business (Wire chief, dispatcher, etc)
10 Keep this circuit closed
12 Do you understand?
13 I understand
14 What is the weather?
15 For you and other to copy
17 Lightning here
18 What is the trouble?
19 Form 19 train order
21 Stop for a meal
22 Wire test
23 All copy
24 Repeat this back
25 Busy on another wire
26 Put on ground wire
27 Priority, very important
28 Do you get my writing?
29 Private, deliver in sealed envelope
30 No more (end)
31 Form 31 train order
32 I understand that I am to ...
33 Car report (Also, answer is paid for)
34 Message for all officers
35 You may use my signal to answer this
37 Diversion (Also, inform all interested)
39 Important, with priority on thru wire (Also, sleep-car report)
44 Answer promptly by wire
73 Best regards
88 Love and kisses
91 Superintendant's signal
92 Deliver promptly
93 Vice President and General Manager's signals
95 President's signal
134 Who is at the key?
Makes one wonder about today's programming languages, libraries, data compression techniques and algorithms. Every few years, Moore's Law crams more memory, processing power and storage capability into less space. This convenience allows for fat languages, inefficient library routines, sloppy coding techniques, memory hog apps and bloated operating systems. Amdahl's law was right.
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