Wire procedures

[NW Mailing List]

GA, and other thoughts 
Posted by: "Bill Dunbar" wkd25 at comcast.net   morseopr 
Fri Jun 19, 2009 3:31 pm (PDT) 

Frank Scheer wrote (snipped):


> One thing to observe about the keys and bugs used for radio 

> telegraphy versus land-line is that the latter has a switch to open 

> and close the key. Since telegraph connections along a wire were 

> serial connections, only one person could be sending on the wire at 

> a time. Once they finished, my understanding is that they sent "GA" 

> for "go ahead." They had to close the key to hear the reply.


If I may clarify a bit, in wire work there is no need to tell the 
other office to go ahead, since it is implicit in closing the key that 
you release control of the wire. During a two-way exchange, closing 
the key not only releases the wire, it implies, "go ahead." And it 
should go without saying that if you want to use a wire and it's not 
active (nor a dedicated circuit), it is at your disposal; open the key 
and call another office.

Once an operator calls another office and receives, "i," (that is, 
aye) followed by the office call, the connection is established; each 
knows the other's identity and it is totally unnecessary to send call 
signs with each transmission. If the second office doesn't catch the 
originating office's call, he/she might answer with "i" and his call, 
but send a question mark and "wo" for "Who?" and the originator will 
identify.

In my experience (admittedly confined to the Midwest) "GA" was used 
for "go ahead" followed by the last word copied correctly. If you had 
not missed anything but had to break the sender, you might send "GA" 
and a comma, meaning "I've copied everything so far; go ahead from 
this comma." The other office would send a comma and proceed from the 
last word sent before being interrupted.

"GN" was used to request or give permission to close an office, and 
frequently as a pleasantry to another operator when ending a trick. 
Since "GA" was used as a procedural tool and GN stands for "good 
night," initial pleasantries in an exchange were confined to "GM" for 
"Good Morning" any time between midnight and noon, and "GE," "good 
evening," from noon until midnight. (This wasn't confined to 
telegraphy; on arriving at Camp Bowie near Brownwood, Texas late in 
December, 1943 I was surprised to hear local radio station announcers 
starting programs shortly after 12 noon by saying, "Good evening.")

Relay operators employed another time-saving trick. Upon contacting an 
office to send several messages, he/she would send the first message, 
then say, "hr wo," and close the key, meaning "I have more, what's 
your sine?" The receiving op would send his sine and maybe add "GM (or 
GE)," then the relay op would respond with "gm hr..." and launch into 
the rest of the file. If he was acquainted with the other op he might 
say, "gm Frank hr..." He now had the receiving operator's i.d. and 
would write the service on each message with one hand while 
simultaneously sending with the other. After sending the last message 
he'd say "nm" for no more, and close the key. The receiving operator 
would respond with OK and his sine, thereby acknowledging receipt of 
all messages sent after the first.

All this takes much more time to describe than do and I hope it 
provides a bit of light on our art.

73,

Bill Dunbar



June 20, 2009

Thanks for the clarifications, Bill.  It is interesting to me how many of the telegraphic traditions carried over to telephone and teletype.  For example, on the C&O Richmond Division around 1971, a day office operator would say "Good morning, Mineral" (with Mineral being the station name) and the dispatcher would reply "Good morning, Mineral."  The same protocol was used when closing the office, such as "Good night, Mineral."

I worked at C&O's Q office a few times, which was on the top floor of the First National Bank building on East Main Street in Richmond, several blocks west of the Main Street Station.  The General Manager's office was on an upper floor, with other divisional offices.  In the teletype era, it was the hub between local teletype lines and the long-distance ones such as a wire to Cleveland, Ohio.  At midnight, the operator counted how many messages had been sent and received for each office to which it was connected, put that count in a message, and closed with "GN&GM Q."  The message went on top of a bundle closing out the previous day's wire traffic for that office.  Meanwhile, the "Good Night and Good Morning" was the greeting appropriate for midnight, at the end of one day and start of the next.

73,

Frank