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Why '73' ? Original author: Louise Ramsey,
W3WER The
traditional expression '73' as a greeting and closing remark is dating back
to the early years of over-land telegraphy. It may be found in early codebook
tables, each time with a slightly different meaning in successive editions,
however always related to the meaning 'ending' or 'signature'. It is not very
well possibly to prove this actually has been applied in this way. The
most authentic meaning of '73' may be found in the first edition of 'National Telegraphic Review and Operators
Guide', edition 1857. At that time, '73' was meaning: 'with love to you'! In successive editions this expression of the
trade was defined in much the same way. It is remarkable many of the old code
expressions still have the original meaning, but '73' has been changing
slightly over time since.
In 1859
'Western Union Company' issued a simplified '92-key'. This was a simple list
with numbers between 1 and 92, containing a number of ready-made expressions
for application at overland-telegraphs. In the '92-key' list, '73' was
changed from the general and brotherly greeting into the flowery: 'please accept my compliments', as
this was regarded as better related to the flowery parlance at that time.
Between 1895 and 1900 many handbooks have been printed, with many variations
to this theme. In the 'Dodge Telegraph Instructor' it was 'redefined' again
to a more general compliment. In the 'Manual of Railways and Commercial
Telegraphy' of the early 20th century it had a double meaning, one of which
was: 'my compliments to you'. In
the summary however it was brought back again to a simple compliment. In a self-study book on telegraphy,
entittled: 'Telegraph' by Thomas Alva Edison, the original definition had
been restored with: 'accept my
compliments'. In a later edition of the 'Dodge Manual' around 1908 is was
defined for the first time as: 'kind
regards' , that actually was going back to the older meaning in a
previous edition, when is had been defined as: 'Compliments'.
Supplement by W4SCO Accutally '73' was more of a notion
amoungst telegraph operators in the days of the 'Wild West'. It had the
connotation of the Winchester 1873 riffle, that was one of their most
precious belongings, should be passed on the other operator. '73' then had
the meaning: 'do you want my riffle?'
and '73s' was was related to more guns he wanted to hand-over because the
Wincherster was a dear friend. Suplement by N2EY This riffle story is very nice but
is not according to facts. The real source of '73' and '88' has always been
the numbercode, that had been in use by all over-land, wire and wireless
telegraph operators and therefore was being interpreted everywhere in the
same way and analogue to the contemporary Q-codes (see W3WER). The list below
is part of this old number code: 1 = wait The 'American Morse-code' was in use
by over-land wire operators. The signal '30' (in the table) in this code was
signalled: ...-. - , with the zero as
a long mark. The signal was later distorted to a single sign like: ...-.- ,
that currently will be signalled without much thought as SK or VA, without
the space between the characters. 73 – always without the plural! Bob J. van Donselaar, on9cvd@veron.nl |
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