The History of Morse Code

         Since ancient times, people have found ways to communicate with each other from afar. The first form of communication was phryctoriae, a system of communication with fires burning on selected mountain tops. In this way the Achaeans conveyed the message that Troy had fallen, lighting fires from peak to peak starting from Troy and reaching Mycenae.

         Since then, communications have gone through many stages. In the mid-19th century, Samuel F. B. Morse managed to connect Washington, D.C. to Baltimore with a wire that carried the Morse code of dots (a short sound wave) and dashes (a long sound wave). Communications evolved rapidly, yet there was one limitation pending: the wire. Two neighboring cities could be connected by means of wires. The connection of two distant cities or even countries would require huge projects since the length of the wire would have to be thousands of miles long. As far as intercontinental communication is concerned, the wire method would be literally impossible.

         The problem was solved at the beginning of the 20th century when the Italian Marquis Guglielmo Marconi sent the letter “S” from England to Canada through radio waves, an intangible carrier. Over the years the possibilities of communication have exceeded all imagination with Morse Code becoming more and more common.

         Morse code named after its American inventor Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872), is a communication system consisting purely of dots and dashes with the dash being 3 times longer than the dot. Alphabet coding was first used in 1837. Morse studied the letters of the alphabet and noticed that “E” and “T” were used most often. That's why he decided to code E with a dot and T with a dash. The letters A, O, I, S, N followed and then the remaining letters, as well as numbers with their corresponding symbols with more complex combinations.

         The code was first used in wired telegraphy along with the invention of the telegraph by Morse himself and later in wireless telegraphy, along with the discovery of radio communications. When using visual or audio symbols, the exact durations of the symbols and pauses must be observed so that they are easily read by the recipient.

         Morse code symbols are transmitted either audibly or visually. Sounds can be transmitted via the telegraph or even by striking an object. The usual mode of visual transmission at sea is the Aldis Lamp, a lamp with a range of 8 miles. Other ways of morse code transmission are written symbols, transmission through one or two flags, with flashlight signals, etc.