By DOUG TUCKER
AP Kansas City

Photos of Bob Ladish and Dave Young

Yes, Morse Code. Technology that AP correspondents had used at Civil War battlefields was still sitting around when Ladish began a 50-year AP career by ripping thick paper off cranky old teletype machines and delivering it to editors who wore green eyeshades.

The machines, when they weren't broken down, rattled along at 66 words per minute. By 1965 when Dave Young mustered out of the Air Force and joined AP in Kansas City as a field tech, all the Morse Code machines had finally taken their place on the museum shelf alongside the quill pen and the Guttenberg Bible. Significant changes in communications technology were just beginning to appear on the horizon. But neither man could possibly have envisioned the breath-taking advances that by 2002 would have space-age computers transmitting millions of words in a matter of seconds.

"I sure didn't foresee it," said Young, who is retiring this spring as Kansas City's chief of communications. Ladish worked his way up from copy boy to assistant chief of communications, working primarily in Kansas City.

Young's career took him around the country until he returned to Kansas City in 1992 as chief of communications. Now both men are retiring this spring. Young and Ladish spent most of their first years as field techs, driving thousands of miles a week servicing AP equipment at newspaper and broadcast members.

"Every teletype machine had to be totally rebuilt twice a year," Young said. "Every six months we'd make a swing, replacing all used parts, gears, clutches. It would take four and a half hours to do a good job on a machine."

Technology that young people take for granted today was unheard of when Young and Ladish were helping the AP keep body and soul together. "We didn't have pagers or cell phones either," Young said. "Members didn't have the Internet for backup. If a radio station somewhere out in rural Iowa went down, it didn't matter what time day or night, you picked up your tools and you got on your horse. There was a lot more equipment, mechanical equipment. The old punch tape, the hot metal linotype machines, the old photo fax machines where we had nothing but black and white pictures.

"We had a term, `FITCAL.' It meant feel, inspect, tighten, calibrate, adjust and lubricate. Now the closest we come to doing any of that would be vacuuming out the fan air cleaners in the photo service.

"Everything's electronic now-disposable key boards, disposable mice. Now when a member goes out of service, you put them on the Internet. If it's after hours, pick them up the next day."

After a while, their jobs grew stale.

"Every machine began to look the same, every serial number," Young said. "My fingernails were always greasy and grimy. We weren't really technicians. We were mechanics."

So both men elected to go into management, which was both good and bad. It was good to get the grease washed out of their clothes and hands. But the challenge became even greater as technological changes, year after year, began coming in waves. In many respects, these two men are supreme survivors. Neither had had any formal training in computer science when the first computers began showing up in newsrooms. Yet, they helped keep AP in the forefront of the technological revolution.

"It was incredible. I really struggled to keep up," Ladish said. "We had to struggle every year because the changes came so quickly, just one right after another. It kept you on your toes. But it was also fascinating."

Looking back, they realize the changes came even faster than they had seemed. When it was happening, there just wasn't time to stop and think about how quickly everything was zipping past.

"Things were happening so fast," said Young. "By the time we learned something, whether it was the cathode ray tube or the minicomputer, something else would come along.

"It's just been a constant change. From 66 words a minute to millions."

But it's also been fun.

"For us old-timers ... My God, what we've seen in our careers," said Young. "It's mind-boggling. Now, in a sense, the technology has passed us by. We're relying on the young generation, people whose minds are not cluttered with the old stuff. They come out of these computer schools and they can pick up software and picture solutions."

In his time, Young said, "They used to come up and throw a new bolt on my desk. Now they throw new software at me and an inch-thick book. I think it's the perfect time for me to leave." (March 13)