Off Topic. Way Off Topic. Even more so than before's Off Topics.
Steven,
I can relate to your message fully.
By the way, as for Morse's usefulness, I doubt that you saw my post script which I edited in, while you were posting your message. Go back and view it.
".. and to the feeling of fear and apprehension when, as a pre-teener, making the trip in town to the FCC office to take the code proficiency exams, followed by the elation when one passed."
I took my first test for the Novice Class at some guy's home in Brooklyn. Yep, I think I was just barely a teener then (just about thirteen at the time).
I learned the code when I was seven, thanks to my Dad's coaching. He was a naval radio engineer during WWII.
My Morse came in handy several times later in my career. When I was going to college, I took a job with AT*T full time, and managed to work around day and night classes at a time when I was working the High Seas board. Morse was used for doing roll calls to ships at sea and to private airborne customers. The Roll calls were done for several reasons.
First, as a means of determining their well being; second, to continue plotting their coordinates so as to have them in our radio sites (proper antennas, radio frequencies, etc., since we were using skip frequencies which tended to change with time of day), and thirdly to set up passenger calls by way of a munual patch arrangement with the overseas operators who were in the same building as we.
BTW, there were over 5,000 overseas operators on duty at that time in this office, and this was pre EEOC. You can take it from there.
We also used Morse on telegraph "clackers" of the old railroad genre, to coordinate changes with craftsmen at the remote antenna and transmitter/receiver stations in New Jersey, from our overseas testbaord vantage point in the control room in NY.
The transmitters and receivers were in Manahawkin, Ocean Gate, Lawrenceville, and Netcong (all NJ) at the time. The office I worked in was two blocks west of China Town in lower Manhattan, at 32 Avenue of the Americas, which was then the ATT Long Lines HQ Building.
Later, when I entered the military, the Morse test along with Bell's recommendations to the Dept. of the Army landed me in the Signal Corps, whereupon, through various meritorious means and some degree of good fortune, I qualified for an instructional role during he Viet Nam era.
I spent two years feverishly studying and later teaching magnetic amplifier and photovoltaic theory as applied to airborne surveillance systems. This was in Fort Monmouth NJ, right next to Bell Labs, and less than an hour from my home in Brooklyn by way of the Goethels Bridge.
My Dad and Samuel Morse both did okay by me, I'd say.
Regards, Frank Coluccio
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