Morse Code- A Key Element In The Telecommunications Revolution
Although the Morse Code is now almost exclusively used in amateur radio, it was once an important communication system that, despite being designed to be used over a telegraphic system, found its primary support in radio systems over the years. And while it is hardly used in modern transmissions, we must recognize the merit of those pioneers who allowed wireless communications from places where the transmission of information was inconceivable.Let's start from the beginning. In 1837, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail devised a method for transmitting each symbol individually as a combination of dots and dashes, i.e. telegraphic signals with varying duration of the active signal.
At first, the code was only numbers that were later converted into messages using a key book, but it was later expanded to include letters and punctuation marks. In May 1844, Morse made the first public demonstration of his telegraph, sending the first message from the Washington Capitol to the B&O railroad in Baltimore. “What hath God wrought?” this system's first sentence was conveyed. During the first years of use, the Morse code was transmitted using telegraph lines that were progressively spread. Later, with Marconi’s invention of the elementary radio transmitter, in the first years of the twentieth century, the transmission of messages also began to be done wireless, so soon airplanes and ships took this new technology for their communications both with land and other boats.
Despite advancements in voice transmission, the system remained in use and was particularly useful in certain situations, such as when atmospheric conditions prohibited the use of other means. Consider that even if there was interference from a thunderstorm, radio frequency Morse Code signals, unlike voice, would always be identifiable even if they were drowned out by atmospheric static. Thus, in addition to overcoming interference (both atmospheric and caused by other communications) more efficiently, Morse transmission offered other advantages, such as requiring very simple equipment or occupying less bandwidth than a radio signal.
If there is an internationally known signal that is the S.O.S, and its roots as a distress warning are found in the Morse code. Before its performance, when a ship was in danger, it launched a CQD: (Copy Quality, which was the general calling code, and Distress). However, the S.O.S. was adopted as an international distress signal following the International Conference on Wireless Communication at Sea in Berlin in 1906. Although it is commonly assumed that this signal means "Save Our Ship," "Save Our Souls," or "Send Out Succour," the truth is that it has no meaning and was chosen solely for its ease of transmission utilizing Morse code, with a series of three short, three long, and three short touches. Similarly, its simplicity made it more difficult to get lost or misunderstood. The Slavonia was the first ship to send out an SOS after being shipwrecked near the Azores Islands on June 10, 1909.
Years later, on April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic launched an SOS during its sinking, a tragedy that popularize it and caused it to replace the previous relief message. -.-- --- ..- .----. .-. . / .- .-- . ... --- -- . .-.-.-Did you get that? You might have if you lived in the 1850s or are a modern amateur radio operator. That's morse code, and in an age of constant information communication, it wasn't long ago that this method of communication was critical to keeping the world turning. During the World Wars, it was used to send public messages over long distances. It was used to transport mail across oceans.
Morse code was, in some ways, the first form of texting.
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Back in the early 1800s, engineers and scientists were just starting to pioneer electrical communication methods. The electrical telegraph system was invented in 1836 by Samuel Morse, Joseph Henry, and Alfred Vail. It was the first system that allowed for long-distance communication. However, there was a problem, it could only communicate pulses of electricity to another machine.This meant that you wouldn’t be able to communicate utilizing voice or text, so a new way of getting messages across was needed.
A code was developed by none other than Samuel Morse to decode electrical pulses back into the original message, though Morse's code wasn't very difficult at first.Originally, Morse’s code only incorporated numbers. This was useful for communicating some information, but it was insufficient to establish a solid communication ability. Vail contributed to the code's expansion to include letters and special characters. Morse Code was thus born.The code assigned numbers and letters to a series of short and long electrical pulses. These pulses would later be referred to as dots and dashes. On a side note, Samuel Morse was a fascinating person. He was an avid painter and in fact, tried to make painting his profession for several years. He turned to electricity, his other passion during his lifetime, after failing to make ends meet with painting. Morse began researching electromagnetism and electrical communication, but he faced stiff competition along the way.
Men by the name of William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone secured a lot of resources to create a working telegraph machine. Morse, on the other hand, was working on his telegraph with a man named Leonard Gale, who assisted him in increasing the range of his telegraph to 10 miles. However, neither of these men had a large sum of money to invest in the project. This is what led Morse to collaborate with Alfred Vail, who had financial backing and eventually assisted Morse in bringing the telegraph and his code to life. If you'd like to learn more about Samuel Morse, his life, and his other inventions, there's an article here that goes into detail.
The rules of the morse code are as follows. Each “dot” serves as the basis of time for the code. One dash equals the length of three dots. There is a silence equal to the length of one dot after each character. Because of this relative timing, morse code can be easily sped up and slowed down while maintaining the same pace. As far as how Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail decided on how to assign the specific series of dots and dashes to each letter, they studied the frequency with which each letter was used in the English language.
They then assigned the easier dot and dash sequences to the most used letters during that period. For example, The most common letter, E, is represented by a single dot. Originally, telegraph machines would mark sheets of tape with the message, but ultimately, telegraph operators learned to decode the dots and dashes audibly, making the tape unnecessary. As a result, morse code began to be taught as an audible language rather than a written one of symbols.