(Later)  "I just got my Bug ... and sister, am I one happy guy! It took awhile to become accustomed to the adjustments and my sending skills, but I must say that the wait was more than worthwhile.  I sure can see what all the pride is about. Soon I will be looking towards a General exam and, even though code is no longer required, I can say that CW will be my preferred mode."

  It is so very cool what y'all do (at) Vibroplex for us hams. Words cannot express my indescribable gratitude. Finally something really great that doesn't fold up and blow away. Vibroplex products truly span the generations. The 1922 Original I picked up for a song on Ebay works just like the Blue Racer 2000 I bought from you. And the Vibrokeyer is excellent as a "Cootie Key." Its also pretty fine as a single-lever keyer paddle."

  Your products make it possible for us aging newbies, and all folks, to connect with the magic of communication over long distance. I'm going to get a sounder and learn American Morse. Over "phone lines" yet. Vibroplex floats above all fads. Dig it. 

 . . . Interestingly enough, I can't recall the specific date that I bought my Blue Racer, but I do remember that I was working at Columbia Pictures on 'I Dream of Jeannie,' 'Bewitched,' 'The Flying Nun,' and 'The Monkeys' . . . I thought you might like to know that CW was still in use at that time for communication from the stage sound mixer to his recordist, though by then there was also voice communication, and sometimes we just yelled at each other. Many of the audio mixing panels in use today still have a button on them marked 'O.W.,' which stands for 'Order Wire.' This was simply a twisted pair with battery on the line and a buzzer at either end. By sending the proper CW command, the sound mixer could request his recordist to roll a take, and in turn the recordist would acknowledge back in CW when the system was up to speed. 

  During this era, Columbia Pictures was located at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. Paramount Pictures and the old RKO Radio Pictures studio were both on the corner of Gower Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, a distance of several miles. You can still listen to some CW that I sent years ago. It plays over the RKO Radio Pictures logo at the start of the film where the lightning bolts burst over the radio tower and as sound effect in many other studios films as well.

     The use of CW in the motion picture studios was predicated by the shortage of copper during WWII.  A voice circuit required, as a minimum, a matching transformer at both ends plus a separate copper pair to carry the voice transmission. Add to that, microphones, tubes, a power supply and all the related ancillary equipment, and you can easily underestand why the old studio CW order wire was a communications mainstay. Of course, all that has changed now, and most of the old timers like myself have been put out to pasture along with our archaic form of communications.