In the heyday of Morse telegraph operators, a company advertised
for operators, and an aspirant went into the waiting room where
some 30 others were standing and waiting. After a few seconds
the aspirant walked over to the mangers door and walked in.
In the background was a morse transmission of
"If you can read this, come into the office".
Barry, W5GN
-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of David
Gilbert
Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2017 12:01 PM
To: xdavid@cis-broadband.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Iddy-umpty
From an article on BBC.com about words about to be lost:
"Iddy-umpty"
"An affectionate term for Morse code, used in the early 1900s. ‘Umpty’
had been in use since the mid 19th Century as a slang term for an unspecified
or seemingly impossibly large number (which eventually gave us the word umpteen
in the early 1900s). To that was attached the apparently random prefix ‘iddy’
to form ‘iddy-umpty’, a word intended perhaps to imitate the stuttering sound
of a Morse code transmission, and to allude to its seemingly countless stream
of ‘dits’ and ‘dahs’."
I had never even heard that term before, and I've been licensed since 1967.
73,
Dave, AB7E
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