# Morse tape machines



## Ynot (May 23, 2009)

Interesting video on you tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWtdHKrxGfA

YNOT


----------



## jaydeeare (Feb 5, 2008)

I certainly remember the punch tape morse machines we had at FNC. they were a not as big as this, and had a speed dial on he top.

A 'dah' was offset holes and a 'dit' was in-line holes. these can be seen in the video.


----------



## charles henry (May 18, 2008)

*more*



jaydeeare said:


> I certainly remember the punch tape morse machines we had at FNC. they were a not as big as this, and had a speed dial on he top.
> 
> A 'dah' was offset holes and a 'dit' was in-line holes. these can be seen in the video.



If I remember the one you used was probably a "wheatstone", the one shown
in that movie clip was oooooooold. Wonder if you also used an "undulator"
to print out "high speed to 300wpm" morse 
de chas


----------



## jaydeeare (Feb 5, 2008)

charles henry said:


> If I remember the one you used was probably a "wheatstone", the one shown
> in that movie clip was oooooooold. Wonder if you also used an "undulator"
> to print out "high speed to 300wpm" morse
> de chas


Sorry Chas, can't remember the name. All I know was that it was painful to listen to.

Sometimes we used to crank it up just to see how fast we could go, then crank it down to just below our 'level and it seemed so much easier after that.

When we were doing typing, the teacher put on this tape of e's dit dit dit dit dit..etc... so we could get into the rhythm whilst typing from exercise books. How we HATED that!!


----------



## GBXZ (Nov 4, 2008)

Is/was KSM a US Coastguard station, and where is/was it located?

Tnks


----------



## spongebob (Dec 11, 2007)

Is this the machine that later morphed into the telex machine that preceded the facsimile machine of the 80's?

Bob


----------



## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

GBXZ said:


> Is/was KSM a US Coastguard station, and where is/was it located?
> 
> Tnks


KSM is a volunteer operated coast station owned by the Maritime Radio Historical Society. It uses the old San Francisco station KPH. Google Maritime radio Historical Society for more info.

John T.


----------



## NoMoss (Mar 14, 2007)

bob jenkins said:


> Is this the machine that later morphed into the telex machine that preceded the facsimile machine of the 80's?
> 
> Bob


The morse tape machines were what we called 'two-unit' tapes, the telex machines used 'five-unit' tapes with each row of holes being used for a different letter or number (after the letter shift character). Some of the older 'three row' telex machines needed to change the shift to produce either letters of numbers from the same signal. Even now I sometimes lapse into 'three row' typing and produce even more gibberish than usual. It took a while to get used to 'five row' keyboards and do without the need to use letter shift to change from letters to figures.


----------



## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

The Telex machines used the "Murray Code"


----------



## NoMoss (Mar 14, 2007)

chadburn said:


> The Telex machines used the "Murray Code"


I used to be able to read it easily. I also found that the distance from my nose to the end of my outstretched arm was exactly the same as 50 groups of five-letter code; this was very useful for finding and correcting errors in a received message which had a tape made at the same time it was received.
A useless bit of information but was useful at the time.


----------

