500 kHz - Connections

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Although now long superseded, the Maritime Telegraph Distress frequency of 500 kilocycles(kHz) or 600 metres wavelength was universally used from the early years of the twentieth century for the transmission of Morse Code warnings of a vessel in distress.
The original call sign, sent via this frequency and  starting on February 1st 1904, was C Q D with the three letters spaced - transmitted as individual characters. The C Q was already in use as a general call on land telegraphs and the Marconi Company added the D for distress to the maritime signal for use by their operators. Not generally adopted, this was replaced by the now familiar SOS - three letters always transmitted as one character, to ensure its distinction from any other Morse (always shorter) character against the background noise of radio transmissions.
In fact, RMS Titanic's radio operator, Jack Phillips initially signalled the ship's plight using C Q D when his junior operator, Harold Bride, suggested using the new call of SOS, joking that it might be the only chance they would ever get to use it. They alternated the two transmissions thereafter. Ironically, Bride survived the disaster, while Phillips perished.
On the day that the sinking of the Titanic was made known through the Marconi Telegraph System, April 17th 1912, the brother of the Marconi Company's Managing Director, Godfrey Isaacs; Sir Rufus Isaacs, MP - the Attorney-General of the Liberal government; along with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George; Postmaster General, Herbert Samuel and the Treasurer of the Liberal Party, Lord Murray; all purchased shares, at Godfrey Isaacs' suggestion, in the American Marconi Company at the preferential rate of some two pounds per share and prior to the flotation of Marconi on the London Stock Market, when the current market value had already reached some nine pounds per share.
Sir Rufus Isaacs bought a tranche of ten thousand shares, netting an immediate gain of seventy-thousand pounds. A crewman on the Titanic would be lucky to earn sixty pounds per year. To earn the same amount as that netted by Isaacs in one transaction, that crewman would have to work for one thousand one hundred and sixty-six years eight months.
Suffice to say that the enquiry that resulted from the outcry over insider trading ended up with the Select Committee Majority Report exonerating all concerned, stating that none had 'manipulated his public duties for personal gain' with the only criticism being made in the Minority Report of the Ministers' conduct and general handling of the issue. Money, Information & Connections...
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

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