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PBS - Saving the Titanic

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NutmegCT

NutmegCT

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Just watched "Saving the Titanic" on PBS. If you missed this, seek it out.

A story of the firemen, engineers, stokers, electricians, and others who worked to keep the boilers and generators running, to power the lights and marconi - as RMS Titanic slowly died.

Brilliant television.

https://www.pbs.org/programs/saving-titanic/

Excellent.

Tom
 
When I got home from my night class last night, Linda recounted much of it to me. I never knew about the radio guy missing the incoming warning on the Marconi due to so many outbound messages. Lots of other interesting facts.
The show sounded excellent and yes, I will seek it out and watch it.
 
Set it up to record late last night, and will catch it later. There were actually two different programs on it, back to back.
 
It was a good program.

I did not appreciate the political diversion by Ballard at the end of the show.
 
Hi Rick. Fortunately (?) there was no Ballard thing at the end of the broadcast here in Connecticut.

Tom
 
The radio operators weren't employed by Titanic's owners, they were actually Marconi employees. Marconi then contracted to provide passenger wireless services to most lines, so messages for the officers fell more into the "when there's not passenger related work to do" category. In hindsight, moving potential safety related communications to a secondary role seems absurd, but it was the dawn of wireless and it took some type of disaster to make them see the importance of official ship to ship/shore communications.
 
Mike - according to some records, White Star actually <span style="text-decoration: line-through">hired</span> contracted the Marconi employees more as a luxury for the first class passengers, than for any safety reasons.

If it weren't for the wireless, the Carpathia would have never come to pick up survivors.

(There's an interesting story of how the Carpathia came to receive the first CQD from Titanic.)

Tom
 
[No Ballard add-on here in Oregon.]

As for the wireless, the captain <span style="text-decoration: underline">DID </span>receive many reports of pack-ice early on, and had altered his route. Yes, evidently, there were later reports that didn't make it from the wireless room to the bridge... but one wonders if that would have mattered (except to alter course some more or put more scouts out).

As a ham myself, I was amused that the narrator of the show talked about the formal stiff-upper-lip aspect to the radio-man because he used the term "old man" (as in "send us some help old man"). But "old man" (actually "OM" in code) has been around a loooooong time. Maybe it started here, but I doubt it. Also, I had forgotten that there was no "SOS" yet and they used CQD (for "general call distress")... and CQ is still the standard for general call today (though most of us don't use code anymore - and I'll be I can only copy 5-7 words per minute).
 
Hi Mark - one thing I noticed, when they showed the some original radio logs. The actually showed the OM as a standard abbreviation.

Here's the *only* known photo of the actual Titanic wireless room:

real%20mgy%20rroom.jpg


Note the "spark gap" equipment, which led to many "overlapping" signals from various sources. I believe at one point, the Titanic wireless operator actually coded "shut up!" when he got radio calls from the Californian (altho' the Californian was sending ice warnings). Titanic was trying to receive personal greetings messages being relayed to passengers from Cape Race.

Halfway down this page -

https://www.hf.ro/#trd

- you see the CQD OM

CQ was an old Morse for Secu - French <Securite'> - an alert to everyone on the line. Marconi added the D for Distress. And as you say, the OM was standard for Old Man (any guy on the other end).

Tom
 
Hi Tom:
Yes, "OM" is old... though I don't know how old... like 73s and 88s (goodbye and love/kisses). "YL" was also a standard, meaing "young lady." Of course, all this is to make keying faster. That spark technology was messy stuff, and Marconi soon developed tuned circuits that were better (but terrible by modern standards). There is a wonderful book about it called "Thunderstruck" (by Eric Larson), which is actually a murder mystery told at the time of Marconi (and all true)... that refers to the banging that the very early transmitters did during transmission (with each spark). By 1905, things were better, but the land-based systems were still pretty massive.

I didn't know the origin of CQ (though I used it a million times back in my novice code days, and a little with voice when just fooling around). Neat link. That log is spooky even today! Thanks. :yesnod:

N7ALJ here.
 
Oops.

It was a National Geographic program on Sunday night, "Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron" that took a political digression at the end of the program.

My apologies to PBS.

Mea Culpa.
 
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