SHORT: Instructograph Morse Code Trainer
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 17 сен 2024
- Like what I make? Want fewer sponsorship ad reads? Consider contributing to my Patreon at / ourowndevices
Invented by Otto Kirkpatrick in 1929, the Instructograph was used to teach telegraphy students how to interpret and transmit Morse Code, reading various practice messages off a series of punched paper tapes. A surprisingly long-lived product, the Instructograph was manufactured until 1983.
SOURCES:
www.dieterbrach...
technitoys.com...
The problem with the Instructograph machines is, when you slow down the tape to accommodate beginners, you also slow down the elements of each character. So, as you speed up the tape as you learn, the character elements are also sped up, so you have to learn each letter over again.
The modern way to teach Morse code is to use what's known as the Farnsworth method. Each character is sent at a given speed that doesn't change as you progress. The spacing between characters is adjusted to give the desired words per minute. That way you get used to hearing the characters at a speed that remains constant.
For example, suppose you are trying to learn Morse at 5 words per minute, which is what was required to earn a Novice license. The characters would be sent at, say, 13 WPM but there would be enough spacing between characters to bring the speed of transmission down to 5 WPM.
It's really easy to do in software but not in punched paper tape. You wouldn't be able to merely adjust the governor on the Instructograph machine but would need a separate tape for each speed. Very unwieldy.
Okay, but if a complete noob hears a coded letter at high speed from the beginning, how is he supposed to associate it with a normal letter? I had to make some mnemonics, e.g. if D is written as a dash and two dots, I associated it with the word dagger, because a dagger with a handle looks like a dash and two dots (well, depending on the handle, but for me this association worked great ). But if someone had played the signal to me quickly from the beginning, I would have had no chance to understand or associate it.
@@Zbigniew_Nowak Using mnemonics and looking at the dots and dashes will only slow you down. You need to hear the sound and immediately think of the letter it represents. The most effective training systems will tell you the character and then sound it. You hear the sound and write the character. You repeat that over and over for a while then move on to the next character. You typically start with the simplest characters (e, t, i, m, s, o, h, maybe 5 and zero) and then move on to the more complex ones.
Eventually, you will no longer have to translate sounds into characters; you will have internalized their sounds. Gradually, you will begin to recognize the sounds of common words as wholes and not as combinations of their letters. Soon enough, you will be able to follow the message in your head without having to write it down.
It's not something one can knock off in a day. It's challenging and it takes practice, but most people will be able to achieve a reasonable level of proficiency.
@@johnopalko5223 "The most effective training systems will tell you the character and then sound it. You hear the sound and write the character. "In this case, it is seemingly simple to learn, for example, the dates of historical events - someone will tell you the event and then the date and you will repeat it several times and write it down. Will you remember this way? :) I don't. But maybe I don't understand something about the method you describe, because I haven't seen such training with my own eyes.
@@Zbigniew_Nowak The Amateur Radio organizations in various countries, such as ARRL in the US and RSGB in the UK, sell training recordings that teach Morse code. There are also various software packages, both proprietary and open source, that teach it. Local Amateur Radio clubs sometimes offer classes for people who want to get their licenses. Of course, now that most countries have dropped the requirement for Morse code, you may have to find an Elmer (ham-speak for "mentor") who will teach it to you.
@@johnopalko5223 We started learning at lower speeds and initially long characters (basically numbers since they are longer) and gradually increasing speed with shorter characters. Basically we treated each letter/number as a short melodies of sorts, but we never applied this for actual words since we're in the navy and always transmitted encoded.
Ive been studying the RUclips algorithm as if it was a stock market and if my intuition is correct, then your channel is about to see a MASSIVE influx of viewers and subscribers as soon as the algorithm starts recommending your videos to people who watch channels like Forgotten Weapons. I’m predicting this channel to have ~150k to 450k subs by 2025 and several videos which will have gained almost, if not over 2M views. Specifically the videos about the flechettes (that one’s gonna get a LOT of views) and the exploders and fresnel lens. Your video titles are really good too!
I just realized you got about 30k subs in the past month (I'm one). I'm glad the algorithm picked you up. Your videos are so good and you have a lot of content, I think the viewer growth will only get more rapid.
The on-off switch looks like it allows the speed to be regulated; slow for beginners and then gradually faster as the student progresses.
It does indeed. I just realized I forgot to mention that in the video...
I recently discovered your RUclips channel, and I'm delighted! Great ideas, interesting devices and technologies to discover, it's great! Hello from France :)
And no begging for likes. This makes him a gentleman.
I picked one of these a few years ago. Love putting a tone generator on it and letting it run at the swap meets. Really neat bit of kit.
Another well presented piece. The headphones are hilarious, they remind me of “The Jetsons” TV series.
That's a super cool setup. Wierd old machines are magical.
My father-in-law was a signaller with the Australian forces in Papua New Guinea during WW2, even at the age of ninety, whilst no one was looking he would tap out Morse on the table with his finger.
High speed Morse operator since 1976
This old tech stuff mesmerizes me.
My Dad had one of these in the early 50s. That's how I learned code and got my Novice when I was 10. He modified it with an AC power apply and a different oscillator with variable frequency. He loaned it out and we never saw it again. Thanks for the memory.
Your channel is a gem Thank you
Please do a in depth look at proximity fuses ! Love your content!
I'm planning on filming a lot of content at the Royal Canadian Artillery Museum, so I will see if they have any proximity fuzes in their collection!
Cool devices, thanks! BTW, when I worked for the military, they were still using tapes as a backup for loading the daily code into the crypto devices. That was in 2010!
I recall seeing these in the back of QST into the early seventies.
Great video, Gilles...👍
Pretty cool man, I’d love it if you did a special on a ELF technology.
Or maybe take a glance at Cold War era laser communication.
Either way, I know this can’t be cheap, thanks for your effort.
Just use a shortwave radio tuned to one of several hf cw frequencies. That was how I learned to be able to copy Morse code. I have listened to it enough too that I can actually copy up to no higher than 25 words per minute. And that is if I’m super wide awake. Otherwise it is closer to 10 WPM.
Readers of British periodicals like Practical Wireless or Short Wave Magazine will remember adverts for "The G3HSC Rhythm Method of Morse Tuition", for which rather exaggerated claims were made. This consisted of records of Morse, cut in a special way so that each track wouldn't run into the next. Lesson one was all "dits" (E, I, S, H), lesson two all "dahs" (T, M, O) etc. The idea was that you'd start playing at 33rpm, then speed up to 45 then 78 before moving on to the next lesson.
Then you'd listen to a receiver and could hardly copy a thing, because all you'd done was learn the sequence on the record. 😞
Then in 1980 arrived the Datong D70 Morse Tutor that generated a random string of letters, numbers or both, with fully variable speed and spacing: this vastly improved code tuition. ♥
I was offered the loan of one of these to learn CW when I became a Ham, but I acquired some cassette tapes instead which were much easier to deal with. Lots of Hams, commercial, and military CW operators started with one of these which were very common, but now you don't see many outside of collections and personal hamshacks anymore.
This generation would benefit from connecting the instructograf to a bluetooth device (say a mouse button) that is connected to a smartphone that has a Morse code app that also doubles as a LED bulb controller.
That contraption would probably grab their attention.
I saw one of these at a hamfest last year. It was one of the newer ones with an electric motor though.
Always excellent. Thank you.
Early '60's Boy Scout... we used these machines to learn Morse for getting Merit Badges.....
When I went to the FCC office in 1973 to take the code test for my general class amateur radio license they used something a lot like this to administer the test.
I have a much larger Navy unit that uses paper tapes and has a built-in oscillator and a flasher.
love the channel, you are my new favourite youtube personality, love the forgotten weapons bits they have me in stitches especially when you had a print out of ians face over yours, pure class, i love the items you look at and explain, well presented and very enjoyable to watch, keep it up!
1:37 Two-Track paper tape. 😆
The 8-track stereo model allowed 2 people to practice at the same time while travelling in the car!
In Finnish Army they always used cypher for the messages. So we only learned to receive and send random 5-letter sequences. You could not even adjust the speed of the machine, because the army allowed only one speed. This was not fun at all.
I like this channel
I wonder what dialect the set used. Every operator had their own flavor as to how long a dit, a dah, and a space was. I'd imagine the master tapes were probably mathematically punched to mil spec. Timing.
Oh man...I like old intro so much... Armies used similar device(teleprinter) until 90's.
The perforated tape? Would this be the longest lasting media ever created?
Thanks for showing this. Do you know at what speed per minute it sends the code, and if the speed was adjustable?
Do the tube oscillator soon
I wonder if the code tapes are in telegraph code (for the sounders) or international Morse code (for the oscillators)
any spark gap transmitter in your archives? am trained radio engineer bandwidth physics never seen it
This video interests me so much that I should be working, but I'm watching it. :P But in terms of memorization techniques (and I've read several books about it), I don't understand how the student associated the sound with the letter. Sure, he could practice understanding the code from this device, but what before?
@Zbigniew_Nowak You start slow with simple characters, and gradually speed up the tape. Slowly, bit by bit your brain starts to recognize the rhythm. But it depends on many hours of practice. To get to 20 WPM might take up to 6 months practice.
The trick is not to see the sounds as "dots and dashes". In fact NEVER see such cheat sheets. Always train with a pen and establish a muscle reaction. Best is if you can decouple your brain from the process, just go with the flow and train the reflexes. Hear a "dadidah" and write K, do this for a few minutes then add "dada" and write M. Then do the odd K again, you WILL notice the difference. Mix K and M more and more wildly and you will be able to tell them apart. Sure it takes some time but with 2 letters every week you have A to Z in a two-three months.
Well, I have always felt a deep reluctance to learn something without a logical rule - but of course, I learned some things unconsciously by repetition, e.g. the spelling of words. In fact, I rarely think about language rules when writing. So it's probably the same with this Morse code - matter of time.
@@Zbigniew_Nowak You catch a ball with your hand without doing any logical rules or calculations of Newtonian motion equations etc. Repetition is the key.
@@tectopic This is the kind of thing I've always had trouble with. XD While others mastered the manual gearbox in a few days, I thought for a long time that I would always need a helper to change gears, because it was impossible for me to look at the road and do anything else with the other hand XD But... I somehow mastered it, so it's probably possible even for me with Morse code.
Notification Squad! :)
Lesson and tape, ok.
Anybody else see Cookie Monster in the thumbnail?
Did the company offer a product or feature that allowed the student to test their skills at keying responses back?
You handed your copy sheet to the instructor and he marked it against the sheet which came with each tape.
Or you marked it yourself.
In binary, teacher? Shut up and type.
It seems silly to say (what I must guess is) your name, yet say it so quickly and indistinctly that nobody can understand what you say... 😮
lol. I've been thinking that every time I watch one of these videos.
Apologies. My name isn't very recognizable to most anglophones, even when slightly anglicized. It's Gilles Messier; the G in Gilles is soft and the E and S silent, so it's pronounced "zhill"
There's nothing silly about his name. It's French.
@@SteveMacSticky - no, his name isn't in ANY way silly.
However, the way he states it is literally indecipherable.
He speaks overly slowly, to the point of pausing before saying the last word of each ... ... sentence.
Yet, when he says his own name, he speaks so quickly that it sounds like an Indian on speed. 😃
Gilles speaking his own name is anologous to ordering food at the local fast food restaurant
Typically a new employee will take a customers order and will speak slowly and concisely but over time tje employee will speak faster and faster until the message gets garbled in transmission and the listener has to ask the speaker to repeat the message several times in order to be understood
As an example ; how many million times can you say : Jumbo jack with cheese French fries and a coke before everything gets smooshed together and it sounds like some indiscernible gibberish ,,,