History
In 1857, the United Kingdom sponsored the Commercial Code of Signals for the Use of All Nations at Sea, which introduced four letter flag signal codes to identify individual ships. Circa 1870, the Comercial Code of Signals became the International Code of Signals. By the 1860s, individual ships were being allocated code letters in the United States and Europe. From 1874, code letters were recorded in Lloyd's Register as part of each individual vessel's entry in the register. Generally, code letters allocated to a ship remained with that ship, although there are known cases where new code letters have been allocated following a change of port of registry or owner. Code Letters were sometimes reallocated once a ship had been struck from the register, but no two ships bore the same code letters at the same time. With the introduction of radio for communications, code letters were used also as radio callsigns.
Read more about this topic: Code Letters
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)