I had it in my blood, but it only manifested briefly.  My dad was a radio ham in the early days when Morse code was the only means of communicating by amateur radio. Moreover, I later learned that my maternal grandfather Charlie was a telegraph dispatcher/operator when he first came to California.

Dad encouraged interest in amateur radio by plunking down a heavy all-band radio (with no cabinet) on my desk when I was in grade school. I never was interested in listening to the radio chatter, but learning ‘code’ appealed to me as a cryptographic puzzle. Since I loved building electrical projects, I convinced my best friend Jim Anderson to try out house-to-house communication. I ran a wire pair along back fences to his house, which was just around the block. Then I put a big battery under my desk and used one of my dad’s sending key and clicker to communicate (see below). Unfortunately, it was never used because Jimmy didn’t want to learn Morse code.   Oh, well.

This didn’t interfere with my mission to build a code-sending machine, using cotton thread spools turned by a handle, with bent copper wire to sense the dit’s and da’s.   Holes punched in a long tape were supposed to contain the codes. I was happy to build something that sort of worked. After testing I never used it — that wasn’t the important part.

4/9/15

[note missing bakelite nob on keyer]  ouch!