The last Morsecast

Re the Morse anniversary [Reuters last Morsecast transmission ended on 31 March 1973] - Morse was used from Bangkok, too, in the sixties. It had to be carefully monitored when sending from the General Post Office there which I thankfully discovered accidentally before I got into trouble. We had to take the copy to the GPO from the office and stay while a one-hour tape was punched and sent. The danger of not waiting was demonstrated one day as I watched a UPI transmission being sent. The operator unwound the tape, fed it in backwards and upside down, which meant that whoever was listening at the other end received just a mass of gobbledegook! Apparently UPI had omitted to leave that week’s tip!

It wasn’t all plain sailing for Reuters either. At least one one-hour transmission disappeared into the ether because the Bangkok office forgot to warn Singapore, where it was monitored, to listen out. Unless specially set up, there was only one transmission a day. An urgent story meant an expensive cable, which was not encouraged except in exceptional circumstances. A real problem, since at that time, AP already had telex. ■