Category: History

  • The creator of the Continental code

    I stumbled on to a page on Wikipedia about Friedrich Clemens Gerke, (22 Jan 1801 – 21 May 1888) the man responsible for simplifying Vail and Morse’s original telegraphic code. As the wikipedia article explains, “The original Morse code consisted of four different hold durations (the amount of time the key was held down), and some…

  • Morse Alive!

    Great BBC story on morse code from 2008, mentioned on the FT817 email list by Joe WB7VTY:

  • Samuel Morse’s 219th birthday

    Samuel Morse was born 219 years ago. But of course credit for devising the code that bears Morse’s name goes to his assistant (machinist & inventor) Alfred Vail. His birthday is 25th September 1807.

  • International Marconi Day

    Today is International Marconi Day. He was born on this day in 1874 in Bologna.

  • Ham Radio’s Technical Culture

    Kristen Haring’s book “Ham Radio’s Technical Culture” is a fascinating coverage of an activity that gets precious little coverage in the mainstream. “”Although approximately one million Americans operated ham radios in the course of the 20th century, very little has been written about this thriving technical culture in our midst. Kristen Haring offers a deeply…