Talk:CQ (call)

Re: citation needed for the use of sécurité.

I am only aware of its continued usage in shipping communications as evidenced here https://wwwcdn.imo.org/localresources/en/KnowledgeCentre/IndexofIMOResolutions/AssemblyDocuments/A.380(10).pdf. That's still international though so maybe is enough?

Cqexbesd (talk) 09:56, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

History and usage first paragraph needs a rewrite

The first paragraph of this section, starting with the second sentence, appears to have been copied almost verbatim from the popular culture book "101 Things You Thought You Knew About the Titanic...but Didn't!", which is linked as a reference for the section: https://books.google.com/books?id=LmjHM5HtEHAC&pg=PT94

The information copied from the book is almost entirely wrong. There is no French language connection for CQ, nor does any usage of wording in international postal mail agreements have anything to do with landline or cable telegraphy, nor with the later radio use of CQ.

The origin of CQ as meaning "all stations" in undersea cable communications is mentioned in this article in The Telegraphist in 1884 as having been in use for many years: https://books.google.com/books?id=n65bAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA110&dq=%22cq%22, and again in many newspaper reports in 1895 with reference to the meeting in Berne that year of the International Telegraph Bureau, which set standards for worldwide telegraph service: https://books.google.com/books?id=5P1GAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA45 Ftld (talk) 19:32, 8 September 2023 (UTC)