The Mystery of the Origin of CQ
becomes clearer. We now have a citation from 1884 stating
that CQ is "All Stations"and NOT "Seek You" or any of the
revisionist nonsense from Wikipedia. CQ was never a
solicitation outside of it's use in amateur radio. In
commercial telegraphy it was always an address - "All
Stations". The other related signal was "CP" which is a
Restricted call - to Certain Stations only. RCA's Sam
Francisco Radio/KPH famously used this correctly when they
sent out their nightly PX (Press) for Subscribers - it
wasn't addressed to you unless you paid for a subscription!
Excellent, excellent find. Bill Burns Atlantic Cable
Historian comes to the rescue!
https://atlantic-cable.com/ Absolutely
brilliant research work.
The reference is on page 119.
The alphabet for Bain's printing
was not like the one now in use for Morse. When the Electric
Telegraph Company agreed to adopt the international
alphabet, notice was given to CQ (all stations) to prepare
for the change, and from a fixed date to abandon the one and
adopt the other.
Bill Burns, your docx file
converted to PDF is attached. What excellent work.
Those citations from the 19th
Century clearly establish that CQ is a station call "To All
Stations" even if they are mute on why "CQ" was chosen.
Maybe it has something to do with Berne Switzerland.
This most certainly refutes the
historical negationism, a form of historical revisionism.
Taking a new story and applying it to years ago history as
if it was true.
Wikipedia
is now saying "CQ" came from "C'est qui" - French for
"Who is it!" but of course this makes no sense if CQ is
used as it is to mean "Calling All Stations" as it has
been for over a century. They also are saying that it
means "Seek You!" which I blame the radio amateurs for
because that's the way they use "CQ". As you can tell, I
dislike historical revisionism.
Here's
the misinformation from Wikipedia: It's a mixture of true
and falsehoods. Just like those clever gremlins who
propagate the Sovereign Citizen nonsense that the USA is a
Corporation and that a gold fringed flag is an Admiralty
Flag nonsense.
The
CQ call was[2] originally
used by landline telegraphy operators in the United Kingdom.
French was, and still is, the official language for
international postal services,[3] and
the word sécurité was
used to mean "safety" or "pay attention". It is still
used in this sense in international
telecommunications.[4][5] The
letters CQ, when pronounced in French, resemble the
first two syllables of sécurité,
and were therefore used as shorthand for the word. It
sounds also like the French "c'est qui?", which means
"who's there?". In English-speaking countries, the
origin of the abbreviation was popularly changed to
the phrase "seek you" or, later, when used in the CQD distress call,
"Calling all distress".
CQ
was adopted by the Marconi Company in 1904
for use in wireless telegraphy by spark-gap transmitter,
and was adopted internationally at the 1912 London International
Radiotelegraph Convention, and is still used.[6]
A
variant of the CQ call, CQD, was the
first code used as a distress signal. It was proposed
by the Marconi Company and adopted in 1904, but was
replaced between 1906 and 1908 by the SOS code. When the Titanic sank in
1912, it initially transmitted the distress call "CQD
DE MGY" (with "MGY" being the ship's call
sign). Titanic's
radio operator subsequently alternated between SOS and
CQD calls afterwards.[
Bravo!
73
DR
N1EA
