TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Callsigns and Horse Teeth

Callsigns and Horse Teeth

jmayson@nyx.net
Thu, 21 Oct 2004 02:44:07 GMT

Whenever I get into these discussions on the Internet, I always think
of that old adage about Greek philosophers. They would argue for
hours, even days, over things like how many teeth a horse has and no
one would bother to go look in a horse's mouth.

I looked up callsign history. I was mostly right. According to this
page: http://earlyradiohistory.us/recap.htm there were three owner
requests for exceptions to the E/W rule: WACO, WDGQ, and WMT.

There are other W callsigns west of the Mississippi and these exist
for a number of reasons including: pre-existing callsigns, portable
stations that moved from east to west, stations that changed their
community of license across the divide, and government error (KTGG in
Michigan because the FCC thought "MI" stood for "Missouri").

Now to give this more of telecom flavor ... I used to work at a major
long-distance company, the one with a logo similar to a large object
in the Star Wars movies. A clerk was sending circuit orders to the
small independent local telecos in our region and addressed an
envelope to Mississippi with an "MI". I told her that was Michigan
and she said no, Michigan would be "MN". I said "MN" was Minnesota
which she claimed to be "MA". I start to point out that was
Massachusetts, but saw it coming ... Mass. would've been "MS" which is
Mississippi and around we go again.

I figured the USPS went by the ZIP Code anyway, so the order probably
got there.

John Mayson <jmayson@nyx.net>
Austin, Texas, USA

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, no matter how many teeth you
saw in the mouth of some particular horse, there can always be
exceptions. For example, how many toes does a cat have on its paws?
Some people would say 'five', which is normally the correct
answer. But some cats have *six* toes on one (or all four) feet. The
vernacular name for such cats is 'polydex' and my first cat 'Nicholas'
(the one who was so warm and loving, not the later Nicholas who was
always hateful with humans) was that way. Nicholas had six toes on
each of his two front paws, five toes on each of his back paws. I
guess it is some genetic thing going back a million years or so. PAT]

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