More people started to arrive, a surprising number of reporters among them. "CW was my life," he said and turned back to the receiver. "How are you feeling about today?" An impossible question to answer but he answered it. I realized that true to its nature, Morse will carry on in other parts of the world even after the keys in North America are finally silent. I sat down next to Paul Zell as we listened to Russian and Cuban ships calling their respective coast stations. This is of course a ceremony we have not been permitted to witness, a ceremony that will never again take place. I am convinced there is a secret ceremony of the green eyeshade in which the distinctive headgear is carefully placed upon the head of the operator newly welcomed into the fraternity.
Pictures taken at those stations decades before show the same thing. Pictures I have taken at KFS and KPH decades ago show men in green eyeshades at the key or the Kleinschmidt. All real radiotelegraph operators seem to wear green eyeshades. And way down at the end was the one remaining Morse operating position. When we walked in yesterday both sides of the operating room were lined with racks holding sleek black computers and monitors. Over the years the number of computers steadily advanced as the Morse positions retreated to the west end of the building. On my first visit the operating room had nothing but Morse positions. I have visited KFS many times over the years.
#Diluvion morse radio license
I brought along my favorite straight key in its carrying case and my radiotelegraph license just in case. I secretly dared hope that I myself might be permitted to send these messages. They were messages of greeting and farewell from the Maritime Radio Historical Society and the San Francisco Maritime Historical Park - typed of course with a mill on historically correct Mackay Radio radiogram blanks. I held in my hand two messages I hoped to have transmitted. Tom Horsfall and I were invited along with many others to be present at the Half Moon Bay master station of Globe Wireless from which the final messages would be sent. It was a sad day but one I knew I couldn't miss. But when KPH/KFS signed off the air for the last time yesterday it was the end of commercial Morse in North America. maybe some of us thought the day would never come. But the end had been predicted so many times for so many years while Morse soldiered on, paying no attention, providing good, reliable service for decades after it was declared dead. The End of Morse - The day the keys in North America fell silent by Richard Dillman Read what it was like to be there on that final, emotional day. The final messages were sent from the Globe Wireless master station south of San Francisco.
#Diluvion morse radio code
After providing reliable communications for most of this century commercial Morse code was officially laid to rest in North America in 1999.