SCHWEITZER 2002 Problem 1

For an arbitrary ordinal number $\alpha$ let $H(\alpha)$ denote the set of functions $f\colon \alpha \rightarrow \{ -1,0,1\}$ that map all but finitely many elements of $\alpha$ to $0$ . Order $H(\alpha)$ according to the last difference, that is, for $f, g\in H(\alpha)$ let $f\prec g$ if $f(\beta) < g(\beta)$ holds for the maximum ordinal number $\beta < \alpha$ with $f(\beta) \neq g(\beta)$ . Prove that the ordered set $(H(\alpha), \prec)$ is scattered (i.e. it doesn't contain a subset isomorphic to the set of rational numbers with the usual order), and that any scattered order type can be embedded into some $(H(\alpha), \prec)$ .