After more than a century, naval messages featuring all capital letters met their demise in a most unassuming way. On May 8, 2013, then Chief of Naval Personnel, Vice Adm. Scott Van Buskirk, distributed a policy directive regarding the use of “all-caps” that unequivocally stated: “Therefore, it is not necessary to limit Navy messages entirely to upper case.”
Oddly enough, the statement actually looked like this: “THEREFORE, IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO LIMIT NAVY MESSAGES ENTIRELY TO UPPER CASE.” (Perhaps one last hurrah for upper case naval messages was in order.)
An essential part of the Navy’s communication suite, naval messages have long been the most popular way to communicate with the fleet and its operatives. The distraction of all capital letters aside, messages are designed to efficiently communicate important directives, policies, and issues in accordance with speed of service objectives.
“Speed of service” objectives determine the precedence of the message — flash, immediate, priority or routine. A message designated as flash must go out within 10 minutes, while immediate is 30 minutes, priority is three hours and routine is six hours; depending on the speed of service selected, the format of the message is designated as operational, service or administration.
The long-held tradition of all-caps for naval messages came into play when the Navy embraced the use of teletype machines in the 19th century. The Navy would go on to have a long-lasting relationship with teletype, and as a result, uppercase communications would continue to be issued for the next 160 years.
Teletype: An Enduring Part of Naval History
The history of teletype begins with the teleprinter. Teleprinters evolved through a series of inventions by a number of engineers, including Royal Earl House, David Edward Hughes, Emile Baudot, Donald Murray, Charles Krum, Edward Kleinschmidt and Frederick G. Creed.
By 1846, the Morse telegraph service was operational between Washington, D.C., and New York. Royal Earl House patented his printing telegraph that same year. It was thus an example of a synchronous data transmission system.
Out of this development came early teletype machines, and in the mid-1850s, the Navy began making use of the available technology. Similar to a typewriter but equipped with only three rows, the machines lacked the ability to discern between upper- and lower case letters; as a result, the use of all capital letters to transmit messages became standard.
Teletype’s Evolution
In the early 20th century, teletype’s wire transmission opened the door to radio communication.
The teletype’s ability to transmit messages by radio, known as radio teletype, or Radio Automatic Teletype (RATT), enabled the Navy to communicate with its planes in a speedier manner and was seen by the Department of the Navy as a "'marked step in advance,'" according to an article from the New York Times dated Aug. 30, 1922. The article also touted the benefits of the Navy’s decision to use teletype machines for communicating with its planes: “The new system, it is declared, also possesses the advantage of eliminating much of the chance of error in transmission, receiving and sending experienced in the telephone and telegraph devices."
In the decades following the development of RATT, teletype machines were designed specifically for Navy use. After approximately 12 years of research and development, the first M28 page printer was delivered to the Navy in 1951.
A Radioman Talks Teletype
In the 1970s, teletype was still going strong. Deputy Operations Officer at Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Atlantic (NCTAMS LANT), Donald Owens, joined the Navy in 1977 as a radioman. Of naval communications in the 1970s, Owens said, “In those days, fleet communications were pretty primitive, consisting of visual signal flags, flashing light, flag hoist, and high frequency voice and teletype.”
According to Owens, teletype was “a means for the commander of naval forces to send one written order to the forces in one transmission. One communication equals unified action. The simplicity of this command and control (C2) capability, at the time, should not be overlooked when we look at all the various means we have to communicate in our world today, and still find ways to be misunderstood. One message: Go here, do that, sail safe and report back. Simple, pure and effective.”
Fleet Multi-Channel Broadcast (MULBCST) is the system used to communicate the written word. For example, NCTAMS LANT has the LANT MUL BCST or LMUL, NCTAMS PAC has the PMUL, NCTS GUAM has the Indian Ocean or IMUL, according to Owens.
“Every ship in the fleet is required to copy their region's MUL BCST to receive orders from their commander and the chain of command. Because all of the ships had to copy the broadcast, the channels were divided by ship type and we sometimes call them type-channels,” Owens said.
Type channels include LMAA - frigates, destroyers and cruisers, LMCC - common channel (all ships copy this in addition to their type-channel), and LMDD - amphibious. All of these channels were received onboard the ship and the messages were then printed on teletypes.
“Did I mention that this method of transmission to the fleet is so good for what the Navy needs it to do, it's still in use today around the globe wherever our ships go to sea?” Owens said.
Teletypewriters Click in Harmony
As electromagnetic devices, teletypewriters were electromagnetic devices that “made almost continuous synchronized buzzing and snapping sounds when the print box typed each letter of the words on teletype paper,” Owens said. “A seasoned radioman could tell when a teletype was printing correctly, referred to as in sync or running open or not in sync.”
Teletypes had paper tape perforators and readers as the printed words also created an five-level paper tape capable of being moved to another teletype on another system for re-transmission. A radioman would receive a message, get a paper tape, and then butterfly the tape, which meant rolling the tape up in a neat fashion. Finally, the tape was attached by paperclip to a copy of the message and placed in a basket or queue for its next transmission.
Radiomen at-sea often had duties to relay messages received on one circuit and re-transmit them to another ship on another circuit; according to Owens, radiomen who worked in the message center handling these tapes were “lovingly” referred to as “Tape Apes.”
The Modern Age of Teleprinting
As the age of computers dawned, teletype development began to wind down. Its use continued into the late 1980s to early 1990s, when computer software was developed to emulate the teleprinter. The electromagnetic teletypewriter eventually yielded to satellite communications — modern printers bearing signal translation devices, such as the UYK-20 (64K RAM) and TT-624 medium speed printers. From that point on, the Navy Orderwire (NOW) system was introduced as a computer-based teleprinter.
Shortly following NOW was the beginning of Internet-type technology, complete with dial-up connection and KERMIT relay software to upload files. KERMIT software, a popular packet-oriented protocol from Columbia University, used for transferring text files and binary files on both full-duplex and half-duplex eight-bit and seven-bit serial connections in a system- and medium-independent fashion, was implemented on hundreds of different computer and operating system platforms. KERMIT proved to be a time saver, enabling radiomen to avoid starting over from the beginning each time during the transfer of data. “Before KERMIT, you always had to start over if the data stopped before completing transmission,” Owens said.
KERMIT eventually gave way to personal computer message terminals and GateGuard (MS-DOS). In the early 2000s, the NIPR and SIPR networks were introduced; Fleet SIPRNet Messaging (FSM), developed to provide an alternate method of delivering service messages classified up to Secret to fleet units via the SIPRNet, heralded the beginning of IP-based messaging.
Saying Goodbye to Teletype’s Legacy
As the saying goes, old habits die hard. Although traditional teletypewriters were replaced with computer software and other branches of the armed forces had stopped using all capital letters in their communications years ago, the Navy persisted in its tradition of what is now considered the equivalent of shouting — albeit on paper or computer screen.
After the release of the new policy, James McCarty, the naval messaging program manager at Fleet Cyber Command, said, "Lowercase messages are here to stay; they provide a more readable format, which can be delivered to and shared on any of the current Web 3.0 technologies (chat, portals, wikis, blogs, etc.)."
The younger generation rejoiced. In the age of 140 character limits, texting and posting online in lowercase, acronyms and emoticons, the use of upper case letters to communicate, even the mildest of messages may have appeared a little harsh.
Not everyone was happy with the break in tradition, however.
“You have a lot of folks that have been around for a long time and are used to uppercase and they just prefer that it stay there because of the standardized look of it,” McCarty said. “But the truth of it is, as we move forward, it’s imminent.”
So with several months of the new-fangled upper- and lowercase messaging under its belt, has the Navy felt the effects? Capt. Danelle Barrett, former commanding officer of NCTAMS LANT and current chief of staff of Navy Cyber Forces (NAVCYBERFOR), doesn’t think so. "Well, the Navy hasn't imploded. I think with the limited exception of some old systems that may still need to see machine readable only Pro-Forma messages, it doesn't matter. I'm more interested in the content than the format of the message, and ensuring we continue to have assured messaging to the fleet. There are some messages out there that probably need all caps still, but they were never meant to be read by a human anyway. They'll continue to be phased out as systems and coding are upgraded," Barrett said.
The Future of Naval Messages
To improve and streamline communication efforts, the Navy has developed a new message routing system known as the Command and Control Office Information Exchange (C2OIX), which is more efficient, more affordable, and last but not least, easier to read.
Designed to simplify messages for both user and administrator, the C2OIX made its debut in August. The option to mix upper- and lowercase letters and special characters “makes the readability better for the folks that are actually monitoring in a chat room or reading messages off a portal site,” McCarty said.
When the system reaches its operational peak, it will save the Navy more than $15 million per year.
“By utilizing this methodology we will be able to send messages at 10 percent of the cost and size of current systems," McCarty said.
C2OIX Fast Facts:
- C2OIX is replacing the Navy's current DMS messaging program with a new version of the existing Navy Interface for Command Email (NICE) software, which will be deployed on the secret and top secret networks, as well as create a uniform system for sea and shore duty commands.
- Part of the ongoing upgrade process has been the implementation of NICE, the messaging system that has been in place on the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) since 2011.
- The final phase of C2OIX is scheduled to begin this year and will bring messaging into a true net-centric cloud computing virtual environment. This final stage will remove 66 percent of the remaining servers and save the Navy an additional $5 million annually compared to current costs.
Although the rollout of C2OIX began in August 2013, some Navy systems are not yet able to process both upper- and lowercase letters. However, according to McCarty, " … [I]n these instances, the C2OIX system will be able to convert the text to uppercase before making final delivery."
C2OIX is expected to be fully operational by 2015.