Wirt writes:

[large snip]

>In 1980, almost a hundred years after the initial invention of the Baudot
>code, the US Federal Communications Commission encouraged the switch from
>Baudot (actually, ITA2/Teletypewriter) to ASCII for all radio TTY
>transmissions.

If you have nothing better to do this weekend, and are equipped with a
moderately-decent short-wave radio, you can use one of several
freeware/shareware computeer programs to receive and decode
radioteleprinter transmissions. Teleprinter transmissions are routinely
sent as bulletins to ships on the high seas, among other things; the
transmissions are fairly easy to find. You'll also need a PC with a sound
card, or a Macintosh.

A program for PCs is

   <http://oak.oakland.edu/pub/hamradio/dos/digital/utils/hamcom30.exe>

I use MultiMode for Macintosh, which is shareware:

   <http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/multimode.html>

To "connect" the radio to the computer, I just put the Mac's microphone
on top of the radio speaker. Both these programs will also decode
International Morse code (not the same as Samuel Morse's original code,
which had medium-length elements in addition to short and long ones).

-- Bruce


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