the.com/morse code
a language of beeps that outran every empire and still won't fully die
means A method of encoding text characters as standardized sequences of short and long signals—dots and dashes—that can be transmitted by sound, light, or electrical pulse.
from Named for Samuel F. B. Morse, the American painter-turned-inventor who, with collaborators Alfred Vail and Joseph Henry, helped develop the electric telegraph in the 1830s and 40s. The code that carried his name was largely refined by Vail, who reportedly studied a printer's type case to learn which letters appeared most often—giving the commonest letters, like 'e' (a single dot), the shortest signals. The original American Morse was later reworked into the 'International' Morse code still recognized today.
- SOS origin
- Chosen for simplicity, not standing for anything
- still alive
- Pilots use it to identify navigation beacons
- blink rescue
- POW blinked T-O-R-T-U-R-E on camera
- speed record
- Top operators exceed 75 words per minute
- older than phones
- Predates Bell's telephone by decades
titanic distress signal — sos transmitted by rms titanic on april 14, 1912 as it sank in the north atlantic
dit dah telegraph — samuel morse and alfred vail's 1844 first message: 'what hath god wrought' from washington to baltimore
arctic expedition 1926 — roald amundsen's final sos message transmitted from his aircraft over the barents sea before disappearing