My daughter forwarded the NY Times story to me along with the url. It also says: "Today, a handful of ham radio enthusiasts communicate in <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> Morse code as a hobby and also use it during power failures. " Howie, K9KM http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/technology/circuits/15comm.html?8dpc HE French say petit escargot; the Dutch call it a monkey's tail. On a qwerty keyboard, it's Shift-2. And next month, amateur radio enthusiasts will call it dit-dah-dah-dit-dah-dit. That is when the symbol @ officially becomes the newest character in the Morse code. "As far as we know, this is the first change to the code in at least 60 years," said Gary Fowlie, a spokesman for the International Telecommunication Union, the arm of the United Nations that will oversee the update, which is to become official on May 3. "There is a need for it." In 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse sent the first Morse code message over a long-distance telegraph. The phrase "what hath God wrought" traveled almost instantly from Washington to Baltimore. Later the code was used by the military to transmit messages over radio frequencies. Today, a handful of ham radio enthusiasts communicate in Morse code as a hobby and also use it during power failures. "This is one of those technologies that never really dies completely," said Elliot Sivowitch, a museum specialist emeritus for the Smithsonian Institution who specializes in radio communications. But with the rise of e-mail, Morse code must reckon with the @ symbol, which is essential to every e-mail address. Ham radio hobbyists use Morse code to exchange e-mail addresses on the air so that they can trade files or lengthy Web addresses, said Rick Lindquist, the senior news editor at the American Radio Relay League, the largest association of amateur radio enthusiasts in the country. "Most of our members have e-mail capability," he said. Until now, those ham operators had to spell out @ with two letters of code: "A," a dot followed by a dash, and "T," a dash. The resulting sound is "dit-dah-dah," which also translates to the letter "W." Now the @ symbol is transmitted by combining the letters "A" and "C" and has a sound not shared by any other single character. "The irony is that sending the word 'at' is shorter," Mr. Lindquist said. By about half. Each dash is three times the duration of a dot, and within a single character, the space between sounds is one dot long. So, the word 'at' takes nine beats, or dots; the @ symbol takes 17. How radio hobbyists respond to that difference will determine the popularity of the symbol over the word. So far, the word appears to be winning. "I think they designed it wrong," said Herb Sweet, the treasurer of an amateur radio club in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "I have a hunch that people are more than likely to just go A-T - dit-dah-dah." Mr. Sweet's wife, Barbara, is also a member of the club. In 1976, Mr. Sweet brought home a ham radio and installed it in their bedroom. Mrs. Sweet had just purchased an electric knitting machine, so "there was nothing I could really say," she said. Today, she is the president of the club. Ham operators will probably learn the symbol but may opt not to use it, Mrs. Sweet said. The Sweets live minutes from the Samuel Morse Historical Site, which sits on a Victorian-style garden estate in Poughkeepsie called Locust Grove. "He's right down the road here, Samuel, F. B.," Mrs. Sweet said. "We go by him every day." Locust Grove offers an introductory course in telegraphy for children but has not incorporated the @ symbol into it, said Andrew Stock, the curator of education and public programs. "It's an interesting factoid," he said. "It probably won't be part of our programming." Mr. Stock said his course was designed to give children a quick primer on sending messages in Morse code and that the sequence for @ was beyond the scope of the lesson. Many Morse code users learn punctuation to earn their radio licenses but ignore it later, during actual communication. "There are symbols for things like the semicolon," said Larry Price, the president of the International Amateur Radio Union. "But not one in a hundred Morse operators could even tell you what the character is, because they don't ever use it." Sal Citrano, a retired Navy radio man who served during World War II, said that punctuation was rarely used in federal transmissions at sea. "Military messages used to come in five-letter words," he said. "There were no commas, dashes or anything." Mr. Citrano, 78, spent five months in radio training school in Newport, R.I., before boarding a transport bound for Normandy. He listened to and decoded the Morse code message sent by James Forrestal, the Secretary of the Navy, on Aug. 15, 1945, informing his ship that the war had ended. Today, he has a valid radio license but spends little time on the air. "Now that I have a computer, I'm not active," he said. -----Original Message----- From: Frank Fallon - N2FF [mailto:n2ff@optonline.net] Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 11:17 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:10459] Re: Two New York Times Articles The Thursday April 15th New York Times "Circuits" Section has two articles concerning ham radio. The first on page G3 of the section is "@ Issue: Long Code for a Small Symbol." The article quotes both Rick Linquist and Larry Price and Hudson Division member Herb Sweet. Herb gave me a heads up concerning the article after a NYT photographer visited him last week and took over fifty pictures. Well, Herb's right hand and his J38 key is having its fifteen minutes of fame in today's Times. The only negative about the article is the slant the reporter chose to give at the end that a 78 year old W.W.II operator says, "Now that I have a computer, I'm not active." Well a lot of 78 year olds are a little tired and not too active. This may not have anything to do with the decline of ham radio. Oh well ! The second article on page G4, "A Man, a Plan, A Can: Boosting Wireless Signals" is more troubling for hams in the 2.4 Gig band. The article lets the genie out of the Pringles can. It's almost a how to construction article as there are enough references for the curious to try rolling their own. The Times does say below the can, "... But experts warn that some homemade antennas may violate FCC regulations and cause interference with other Wi-Fi systems." I think "may" is probably the wrong word here. Our old friend Dwayne Hendricks, CEO of Dandin Group and others get mention in the article. Hands up, who wants to write a letter to the Times on this one? Frank Fallon........ N2FF