The meaning of "73"

Glen Zook, K9STH, posted this to the Heathkit mailing list:
http://www.signalharbor.com/73.html

Many amateurs already know that "73" is from what is known as the "Phillips Code", a series of numeric messages conceived for the purpose of cutting down transmission time on the old land telegraph systems when sending text that is basically the same.

In the April 1935 issue of QST on page 60 there is a short article on the origin of 73. This article was a summation of another article that appeared in the "December Bulletin from the Navy Department Office of the Chief of Naval Operations". That would be December of 1934.

The quotation from the Navy is as follows:
"It appears from a research of telegraph histories that in 1859 the telegraph people held a convention, and one of its features was a discussion as to the saving of 'line time'. A committee was appointed to devise a code to reduce standard expressions to symbols or figures. This committee worked out a figure code, from figure 1 to 92. Most of these figure symbols became obsolescent, but a few remain to this date, such as 4, which means "Where shall I go ahead?'. Figure 9 means 'wire', the wire chief being on the wire and that everyone should close their keys. Symbol 13 means 'I don't understand'; 22 is 'love and a kiss'; 30 means 'good night' or 'the end'. The symbol most often used now is 73, which means 'my compliments' and 92 is for the word 'deliver.' The other figures in between the forgoing have fallen into almost complete disuse."

One of the chief telegraphers of the Navy Department of Communications, a J. L. Bishop, quoted from memory the signals that were in effect in 1905:

1	Wait a minute
4	Where shall I start in message?
5	Have you anything for me?
9	Attention or clear the wire
13	I do not understand
22	Love and kisses
25	Busy on another circuit
30	Finished, the end-used mainly by press telegraphers
73	My compliments, or Best Regards
92	Deliver

Now days, 22 has become 88 (love and kisses). I don't know when this came about. 30 is still used in the newspaper and magazine business to indicate the end of a feature, story, or column. And, of course, 73 is still used by amateur radio operators to mean "best regards".

Making any of these numbers plural (73s, 88s, etc.) is incorrect since they are already plural. 73s would mean best regardses and 88s would mean love and kisseses. Those make no sense.

Anyway, the subject of where 73 came from comes up periodically and this article reinforces the "Phillips Code" origin.

Jim, N2EY, adds:

Some other related stuff:

Phillips Code "19" and "31" refer to train orders. They were so well known that the terms "19 order" and "31 order" were still in RR use in the 1970s, long after the telegraph was gone.

The abbreviation "es" for "and" derives from the Morse character "&". The prosign "SK" with the letters run together derives from the Morse "30".

The numeric code is a small part of the abbreviations outlined in the Phillips Code (developed by telegrapher Walter P. Phillips). Here are the numbers as referenced:

W I R E S I G N A L S

WIRE	Preference over everything except 95
1	Wait a moment
2	Important Business
3	What time is it?
4	Where shall I go ahead?
5	Have you business for me?
6	I am ready
7	Are you ready?
8	Close your key; circuit is busy
9	Close your key for priority business (Wire chief, dispatcher, etc)
10	Keep this circuit closed
12	Do you understand?
13	I understand
14	What is the weather?
15	For you and other to copy
17	Lightning here
18	What is the trouble?
19	Form 19 train order
21	Stop for a meal
22	Wire test
23	All copy
24	Repeat this back
25	Busy on another wire
26	Put on ground wire
27	Priority, very important
28	Do you get my writing?
29	Private, deliver in sealed envelope
30	No more (end)
31	Form 31 train order
32	I understand that I am to ...
33	Car report (Also, answer is paid for)
34	Message for all officers
35	You may use my signal to answer this
37	Diversion (Also, inform all interested)
39	Important, with priority on thru wire (Also, sleep-car report)
44	Answer promptly by wire
73	Best regards
88	Love and kisses
91	Superintendant's signal
92	Deliver promptly
93	Vice President and General Manager's signals
95	President's signal
134	Who is at the key?

Telegraph Tales

 

The Day the Power Failed by Stuart Davis

From the now defunct Telegraph Lore site.
Available on the Wayback Machine here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200218063219/http://www.telegraphlore.com/telegraph_tales/power_fail.html

The Day The Power Failed {From the December, 1978 issue of The Telegrapher, published by the late Dr. E. Stuart Davis at his National Telegraph Office in Union, N.J. Thanks to Bill Dunbar for providing this for use in Telegraph Lore.] 

A similar office in 1945

 It was 10 o'clock on a typical 1924 Thursday morning rush hour in the Postal Telegraph office at 84 State Street, Boston, Mass. The model 13s of the Morkrum mux sets to New York, Philadelphia and Chicago were pounding away, while the iron horse xtrs were gobbling up the slips almost as fast as the punchers could prepare them.

In the Morse department some 70 operators were moving the heavy file. The duplexes to Ford Motor, Montreal and Portland were "doubled." At the overflow that hit the traffic early in the morning, the clang and bang of the Lamson slingshot (conveyor) could scarcely be detected in the overall din.

Suddenly...the lights went out! The motors on the mux ground to a halt and the only sound in this big room was faint clicks from Morse relays on the Test Board. People glanced at each other in utter amazement, laughed and then relaxed while the Wire Chiefs were pounding away on the Bell wires to New York and Albany. "We lost our power!"

Meanwhile, Yours Truly was on his way to the power room in the basement. What a sight! A huge 1,800 ampere fuse had blown, taking with it a section of the marble switchboard and setting the connecting wires on fire. The basement was filled with the acrid fumes of burning insulation and it was obvious that power could not be restored for a long time.

Back on the fourth floor, Plant and T&R; men were arranging 200-ohm local sounders so that they could be used as main line instruments. KOB sets were brought and plugged into table jacks and one by one, lines that could be powered from distant terminals were coming back into service. As quickly as a circuit was made good, an operator was hard at work moving the delayed file.

Twelve single-Morse circuits were set up to New York, two to Chicago, and one each to Detroit and Buffalo. Anybody and everybody who could telegraph was pressed into service - including the Superintendent and Assistant Sup't. A hurry call was put out for the extra force - and to the retirees. By noon, more than a hundred operators were on duty.

At several desks, typewriters had been removed and pens and ink wells brought out. Now, the 80 year-old bonus men of a bygone era were turning out beautiful copy at 25-30 words per minute, such as only the artists of the turn of the century learned to do. By 1 p.m. all delays had been eliminated and traffic was flowing smoothly.

Uppermost in the mind of the Chief Operator was the question, "What shall I do about the night file?" On Thursdays, the average was about 7,000 messages plus an unpredictable amount of overflow press that was copied in the main office instead of the newspapers on Washington Street. The chief was concerned for the welfare of the elderly operators who'd responded to the emergency call and had been on duty since midmorning. Should they be kept on overtime, it was decided to pack several thousand "Reds" (Night Letters) into a leather bag which was then taken to South Station and placed in charge of an Express Messenger. New York was given the train number and made arrangements for it to be met at Grand Central Station. A similar course of action was followed for the traffic that moved via Chicago - except that a DCM was given a Pullman ticket aboard the "Wolverine," due in CH at 9 a.m.

As suddenly as it had been lost, power was restored, soon after 4 p.m. A great cheer went up! Now the mux operators who had been demoted to the only tasks they could perform around an all-Morse office - that of "check clerks" - were back in business, and they made those old Perforators sound like machine guns!

With normality restored there was a gathering of top brass in the T&R; department. Each person had their own version of the day to relate. One Wire Chief who wrote in a very tiny hand was asked, "How many words can you put on a blank?" He didn't know, but replied, "I can copy a ten-word message in the space of a postage stamp." Some bragged of how many words they could stay behind the sender, and so it went.

Finally Wire Chief spoke up: "I'm not the fastest operator around here, but I can copy a message in French with one hand and one in English with the other at the same time."

The Chief Operator went out in the traffic department and returned with a message from the Montreal Duplex in French, and one in English. The Wire Chief was provided with pencils and pads. The two messages were sent at usual hand key speeds. He made perfect copy of both! Amid cheers and slaps on the back, the Superintendent sent out for hamburgers and near-beer (Prohibition, you know) and the rest of us got back to work.

As the Old Timers told us young squirts, "We handled the business about as fast as the machines, and we were a lot more reliable."