Morse code is a language that was originally developed for the Morse telegraph system somewhere around the 1840’s. Samuel Morse had developed a way to transmit tones across wires, which would allow people any distance apart to be able to send each other messages consisting of different types of tones and pulses. When Morse invented his telegraph device, there was a network of wires set up all over the United States that would carry pulses of signal from one point to another. The pulses would represent letters or numbers and the person on the other end of the communication would write down the message being transmitted and then get that message to the intended recipient. Later in the 1800’s, closer to the early 1900’s, Morse code began to be used across radio waves to signal ships at sea and to communicate from one military installation to another. As the military began to develop more elaborate forms of communication, it never abandoned Morse code and today understanding Morse code is part of basic military training. It is also part of basic training for air traffic controllers and commercial pilots as well. The ability to communicate in simple pulses of sound makes Morse code extremely versatile and it can be transmitted across any medium.
Trying to pin down a guide to Morse code can be difficult without actually memorizing the Morse code chart, but there are some quick rules you can use to remember some of the more important letters. Because of the popularity of the term SOS most people know what an “S” is in Morse code and what an “O” is as well. An “S” is represented by three quick blasts of tone known as Morse code dots. An “O” is represented by three longer tones known as Morse code dashes. The term SOS is a standard mayday signal for any vessel in distress and it stands for save our ship. Today, the term is so much a part of our language that when any vehicle ranging from a ship to a small private airplane finds itself in trouble it will usually send out an SOS call even though it may not be using Morse code at all.
Some other quick guides to Morse code are the two most common letters in the alphabet. Similar to a polypill, where one pill contains enough active ingredients to reduce the number of pills ingested, the creators of Morse code wanted to make it simple to represent the letter “E” because that is the most common letter in the alphabet. So the letter “E” is represented by a simple single Morse code dot. The most commonly used consonant in the English language was determined to be the letter “T,” so to make it easier to spell words using the “T” it is represented by a single Morse code dash.
The practical guide to Morse code indicates that the most commonly used letters were given the least amount of dots and dashes to represent them. Numbers on Morse code have significantly longer representations than letters because numbers were formulated after letters, and the numbers were assigned the shortest combinations that were left after the numbers were completed.
Today Morse code is getting phased out by many countries, however the United States still insists that their military personal and commercial pilots learn to communicate in this versatile language.
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