Morse Code

Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the inventors of the telegraph.

International Morse code encodes the 26  basic Latin letters through , one accented Latin letter (), the Arabic numerals, and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals ( prosigns). There is no distinction between upper and lower case letters. Each Morse code symbol is formed by a sequence of ''dits'' and ''dahs''. The ''dit'' duration is the basic unit of time measurement in Morse code transmission. The duration of a ''dah'' is three times the duration of a ''dit''. Each ''dit'' or ''dah'' within an encoded character is followed by a period of signal absence, called a ''space'', equal to the ''dit'' duration. The letters of a word are separated by a space of duration equal to three ''dits'', and words are separated by a space equal to seven ''dits''. — Annexed to the ''International Telecommunication Convention'', Atlantic City, 1947; revised Paris, 1949.

Morse code can be memorized and sent in a form perceptible to the human senses, e.g. via sound waves or visible light, such that it can be directly interpreted by persons trained in the skill. Morse code is usually transmitted by on-off keying of an information-carrying medium such as electric current, radio waves, visible light, or sound waves. The current or wave is present during the time period of the ''dit'' or ''dah'' and absent during the time between ''dits'' and ''dahs''.

Since many natural languages use more than the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, Morse alphabets have been developed for those languages, largely by transliteration of existing codes.

To increase the efficiency of encoding, Morse code was originally designed so that the length of each symbol is approximately inverse to the frequency of occurrence of the character that it represents in text of the English language. Thus the most common letter in English, the letter , has the shortest code – a single ''dit''. Because the Morse code elements are specified by proportion rather than specific time durations, the code is usually transmitted at the highest rate that the receiver is capable of decoding. Morse code transmission rate (''speed'') is specified in ''groups per minute'', commonly referred to as ''words per minute''.

Development and history

Pre-Morse telegraphs and codes

Early in the nineteenth century, European experimenters made progress with electrical signaling systems, using a variety of techniques including static electricity and electricity from Voltaic piles producing electrochemical and electromagnetic changes. These experimental designs were precursors to practical telegraphic applications.

Following the discovery of electromagnetism by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1820 and the invention of the electromagnet by William Sturgeon in 1824, there were developments in electromagnetic telegraphy in Europe and America. Pulses of electric current were sent along wires to control an electromagnet in the receiving instrument. Many of the earliest telegraph systems used a single-needle system which gave a very simple and robust instrument. However, it was slow, as the receiving operator had to alternate between looking at the needle and writing down the message. In Morse code, a deflection of the needle to the left corresponded to a ''dit'' and a deflection to the right to a ''dah''. By making the two clicks sound different with one ivory and one metal stop, the single needle device became an audible instrument, which led in turn to the ''Double Plate Sounder'' System.

William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in Britain developed an electrical telegraph that used electromagnets in its receivers. They obtained an English patent in June 1837 and demonstrated it on the London and Birmingham Railway, making it the first commercial telegraph. Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1833) as well as Carl August von Steinheil (1837) used codes with varying word lengths for their telegraph systems. In 1841, Cooke and Wheatstone built a telegraph that printed the letters from a wheel of typefaces struck by a hammer.

Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail

The American artist Samuel Morse, the American physicist Joseph Henry, and mechanical engineer Alfred Vail developed an electrical telegraph system. It needed a method to transmit natural language using only electrical pulses and the silence between them. Around 1837, Morse therefore developed an early forerunner to the modern International Morse code.

The Morse system for telegraphy, which was first used in about 1844, was designed to make indentations on a paper tape when electric currents were received. Morse's original telegraph receiver used a mechanical clockwork to move a paper tape. When an electrical current was received, an electromagnet engaged an armature that pushed a stylus onto the moving paper tape, making an indentation on the tape. When the current was interrupted, a spring retracted the stylus and that portion of the moving tape remained unmarked. Morse code was developed so that operators could translate the indentations marked on the paper tape into text messages.

In his earliest design for a code, Morse had planned to transmit only numerals, and to use a codebook to look up each word according to the number which had been sent. However, the code was soon expanded by Alfred Vail in 1840 to include letters and special characters, so it could be used more generally. Vail estimated the frequency of use of letters in the English language by counting the movable type he found in the type-cases of a local newspaper in Morristown, New Jersey. The shorter marks were called "dots" and the longer ones "dashes", and the letters most commonly used were assigned the shortest sequences of dots and dashes. This code, first used in 1844, became known as ''Morse landline code'', '' American Morse code'', or ''Railroad Morse'', until the end of railroad telegraphy in the U.S. in the 1970s.

Operator-led change from graphical to audible code

In the original Morse telegraph system, the receiver's armature made a clicking noise as it moved in and out of position to mark the paper tape. The telegraph operators soon learned that they could translate the clicks directly into dots and dashes, and write these down by hand, thus making the paper tape unnecessary. When Morse code was adapted to radio communication, the dots and dashes were sent as short and long tone pulses. It was later found that people become more proficient at receiving Morse code when it is taught as a language that is heard, instead of one read from a page.

With the advent of tones produced by radiotelegraph receivers, the operators began to vocalize a dot as ''dit'', and a dash as ''dah'', to reflect the sounds of Morse code they heard. To conform to normal sending speed, ''dits'' which are not the last element of a code became voiced as ''di''. For example, the letter is voiced as Morse code was sometimes facetiously known as "iddy-umpty", a ''dit'' lampooned as "iddy" and a ''dah'' as "umpty", leading to the word "umpteen".

Gerke's refinement of Morse's code

The Morse code, as specified in the current international standard, ''International Morse Code Recommendation'', ITU-R M.1677-1, was derived from a much-improved proposal by Friedrich Gerke in 1848 that became known as the "Hamburg alphabet".

Gerke changed many of the codepoints, in the process doing away with the different length dashes and different inter-element spaces of American Morse, leaving only two coding elements, the dot and the dash. Codes for German umlauted vowels and were introduced. Gerke's code was adopted in Germany and Austria 1851.

This finally led to the International Morse code in 1865. The International Morse code adopted most of Gerke's codepoints. The codes for and were taken from a code system developed by Steinheil. A new codepoint was added for since Gerke did not distinguish between and . Changes were also made to , , and . This left only four codepoints identical to the original Morse code, namely , , and , and the latter two had their ''dahs'' extended to full length. The original American code being compared dates to 1838; the later American code shown in the table was developed in 1844.

Radiotelegraphy and aviation

In the 1890s, Morse code began to be used extensively for early radio communication before it was possible to transmit voice. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most high-speed international communication used Morse code on telegraph lines, undersea cables, and radio circuits.

Although previous transmitters were bulky and the spark gap system of transmission was dangerous and difficult to use, there had been some early attempts: In 1910, the U.S. Navy experimented with sending Morse from an airplane. However the first regular aviation radiotelegraphy was on airships, which had space to accommodate the large, heavy radio equipment then in use. The same year, 1910, a radio on the airship ''America'' was instrumental in coordinating the rescue of its crew.

During World War I, Zeppelin airships equipped with radio were used for bombing and naval scouting, and ground-based radio direction finders were used for airship navigation. Allied airships and military aircraft also made some use of radiotelegraphy.

However, there was little aeronautical radio in general use during World War I, and in the 1920s, there was no radio system used by such important flights as that of Charles Lindbergh from New York to Paris in 1927. Once he and the '' Spirit of St. Louis'' were off the ground, Lindbergh was truly incommunicado and alone. Morse code in aviation began regular use in the mid-1920s. By 1928, when the first airplane flight was made by the ''Southern Cross'' from California to Australia, one of its four crewmen was a radio operator who communicated with ground stations via radio telegraph.

Beginning in the 1930s, both civilian and military pilots were required to be able to use Morse code, both for use with early communications systems and for identification of navigational beacons that transmitted continuous two- or three-letter identifiers in Morse code. Aeronautical charts show the identifier of each navigational aid next to its location on the map.

In addition, rapidly moving field armies could not have fought effectively without radiotelegraphy; they moved more quickly than their communications services could put up new telegraph and telephone lines. This was seen especially in the blitzkrieg offensives of the Nazi German Wehrmacht in Poland, Belgium, France (in 1940), the Soviet Union, and in North Africa; by the British Army in North Africa, Italy, and the Netherlands; and by the U.S. Army in France and Belgium (in 1944), and in southern Germany in 1945.

Maritime flash telegraphy and radio telegraphy

Radiotelegraphy using Morse code was vital during World War II, especially in carrying messages between the warships and the naval bases of the belligerents. Long-range ship-to-ship communication was by radio telegraphy, using encrypted messages because the voice radio systems on ships then were quite limited in both their range and their security. Radiotelegraphy was also extensively used by warplanes, especially by long-range patrol planes that were sent out by those navies to scout for enemy warships, cargo ships, and troop ships.

Morse code was used as an international standard for maritime distress until 1999 when it was replaced by the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. When the French Navy ceased using Morse code on January 31, 1997, the final message transmitted was "Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence."

Demise of commercial telegraphy

In the United States the final commercial Morse code transmission was on July 12, 1999, signing off with Samuel Morse's original 1844 message, , and the prosign ("end of contact").

, the United States Air Force still trains ten people a year in Morse.

The United States Coast Guard has ceased all use of Morse code on the radio, and no longer monitors any radio frequencies for Morse code transmissions, including the international medium frequency (MF) distress frequency of However, the Federal Communications Commission still grants commercial radiotelegraph operator licenses to applicants who pass its code and written tests. Licensees have reactivated the old California coastal Morse station KPH and regularly transmit from the site under either this call sign or as KSM. Similarly, a few U.S. museum ship stations are operated by Morse enthusiasts.

Operator proficiency

Morse code speed is measured in words per minute () or characters per minute (). Characters have differing lengths because they contain differing numbers of ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Consequently, words also have different lengths in terms of dot duration, even when they contain the same number of characters. For this reason, a standard word is helpful to measure operator transmission speed. and are two such standard words. Operators skilled in Morse code can often understand ("copy") code in their heads at rates in excess of 40 .

In addition to knowing, understanding, and being able to copy the standard written alpha-numeric and punctuation characters or symbols at high speeds, skilled high speed operators must also be fully knowledgeable of all of the special unwritten Morse code symbols for the standard Prosigns for Morse code and the meanings of these special procedural signals in standard Morse code communications protocol.

International contests in code copying are still occasionally held. In July 1939 at a contest in Asheville, North Carolina in the United States Ted R. McElroy W1JYN set a still-standing record for Morse copying, 75.2 . Pierpont (2004) also notes that some operators may have passed 100 . By this time, they are "hearing" phrases and sentences rather than words. The fastest speed ever sent by a straight key was achieved in 1942 by Harry Turner W9YZE (d. 1992) who reached 35  in a demonstration at a U.S. Army base. To accurately compare code copying speed records of different eras it is useful to keep in mind that different standard words (50 dit durations versus 60 dit durations) and different interword gaps (5 dit durations versus 7 dit durations) may have been used when determining such speed records. For example, speeds run with the standard word and the standard may differ by up to 20%.

Today among amateur operators there are several organizations that recognize high-speed code ability, one group consisting of those who can copy Morse at 60 . Also, Certificates of Code Proficiency are issued by several amateur radio societies, including the American Radio Relay League. Their basic award starts at 10  with endorsements as high as 40 , and are available to anyone who can copy the transmitted text. Members of the Boy Scouts of America may put a Morse interpreter's strip on their uniforms if they meet the standards for translating code at 5 .

Through May 2013, the First, Second, and Third Class (commercial) Radiotelegraph Licenses using code tests based upon the standard word were still being issued in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission. The First Class license required 20  code group and 25  text code proficiency, the others 16  code group test (five letter blocks sent as simulation of receiving encrypted text) and 20  code text (plain language) test. It was also necessary to pass written tests on operating practice and electronics theory. A unique additional demand for the First Class was a requirement of a year of experience for operators of shipboard and coast stations using Morse. This allowed the holder to be chief operator on board a passenger ship. However, since 1999 the use of satellite and very high-frequency maritime communications systems ( GMDSS) has made them obsolete. (By that point meeting experience requirement for the First was very difficult.)

Currently, only one class of license, the Radiotelegraph Operator License, is issued. This is granted either when the tests are passed or as the Second and First are renewed and become this lifetime license. For new applicants, it requires passing a written examination on electronic theory and radiotelegraphy practices, as well as 16  code-group and 20  text tests. However, the code exams are currently waived for holders of Amateur Extra Class licenses who obtained their operating privileges under the old 20  test requirement.

International Morse code

Morse code has been in use for more than 160 years — longer than any other electrical coding system. What is called Morse code today is actually somewhat different from what was originally developed by Vail and Morse. The Modern International Morse code, or ''continental code'', was created by Friedrich Clemens Gerke in 1848 and initially used for telegraphy between Hamburg and Cuxhaven in Germany. Gerke changed nearly half of the alphabet and all of the numerals, providing the foundation for the modern form of the code. After some minor changes, International Morse Code was standardized at the International Telegraphy Congress in 1865 in Paris and was later made the standard by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Morse's original code specification, largely limited to use in the United States and Canada, became known as American Morse code or "railroad code". American Morse code is now seldom used except in historical re-enactments.

Aviation

In aviation, pilots use radio navigation aids. To ensure that the stations the pilots are using are serviceable, the stations transmit a set of identification letters (usually a two-to-five-letter version of the station name) in Morse code. Station identification letters are shown on air navigation charts. For example, the VOR-DME based at Vilo Acuña Airport in Cayo Largo del Sur, Cuba is coded as "UCL", and UCL in Morse code is transmitted on its radio frequency. In some countries, during periods of maintenance, the facility may radiate a T-E-S-T code () or the code may be removed which tells pilots and navigators that the station is unreliable. In Canada, the identification is removed entirely to signify the navigation aid is not to be used. In the aviation service, Morse is typically sent at a very slow speed of about 5 words per minute. In the U.S., pilots do not actually have to know Morse to identify the transmitter