I was wondering. Morse code was essential for society many years ago… But now with satellite radios, internet, phones… Is there still use for morse code?
Some radio operators still use it, if rarely. Morse code has the advantage that it’s basically just a single tone that you switch on and off, so for the same amount of radio energy it carries farther and can be distinguished in background noise much more easily than voice signals.
It’s also still used in aircraft navigation beacons. The Rush song YYZ gets both its name and its rhythm from the Morse code for YYZ, the code for Toronto airport. Guitarist Alex Lifeson let the other band members hear the tone pattern as he flew them into the airport, and for whatever reason it stuck with them. They associated the pattern with coming home, and decided to write a song incorporating it.
Blink detectors for the handicapped often use Morse code, allowing someone with no other means of communication to speak through the automated device.
Signalling S-O-S either with radio, flashlight, or reflecting sunlight with a mirror has saved a lot of folks in trouble. A lot of folks who don’t know the full Morse code alphabet at least know that letter pattern.
Some military special operations folks need to send messages long distances with very little power. Morse code works for this. Also, many foreign forces do not have the technological resources that the us has, so they use morse code for their long range communications.
Radio nerds still sometimes use it. Its advantages lie in the fact that you don’t need much bandwidth, fidelity, power or equipment to transmit a coherent signal great distances. Its also an international standard. If all infrastructure were to go down in a catastrophic disaster radio geeks with their continuous wave radios will still have open lines of communication.
I’ve tried to learn it. I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.
If you’re locked in an apartment bathroom and the person on the floor below you knows it, it’ll save you a lot of time and yelling.
Yep. …—…—…— is a pretty much a ‘help me’ standard. (SOS)
As an addendum to ham operators learning it, remember that ham radio exists primarily as an emergency response system. That’s the reason they’re still allocated that chunk of the radio spectrum. When you hear about a major, city-wide disaster, where all the phone lines are down, and you’re starting to get the first reports trickling in on the news, those first reports are coming from hams. And sometimes, in a disaster, the only thing you can get to work is a spark gap and a pedal-powered generator, so it’s really good to be able to get communications across with that.
EDIT: enipla, that’s “SOSOSO” that you typed.
Yep. How would you Interpret that? So? So? So? Or SOS? Combinations of three are generally seen as distress signals.
This is nitpicking, but I’d like to point out that Morse code was not as essential as it may seem. Samuel Morse did not invent the telegraph, nor did his system replace and supplant other telegraphic ciphers that were in use around the same time. Much of the British Empire, for instance, used the Wheatstone’s needle telegraph for quite a while, for instance, and continental European countries developed their own schemes. It’s not like 19th and early 20th century telecommunications ran entirely on Morse code.
And one minor thing: On many cellphones, the ringtone for an incoming text message is Morse code for “SMS” (three long signals, two short ones, three long ones), this being the abbreviation for “short message service”.
One point is that the distress signal is not strictly the same as the message “SOS”, as normal messages require pauses between the letters to avoid ambiguity (because Morse code is not a prefix code). But the SOS signal is sent without pauses so its interpretation as letters is ambiguous. It could just as easily be called the “IAMS” signal if that rolled off the tongue better.
But yes, it does extend the tradition of “groups of three” (e.g. three whistle blows, three signal fires) being distress signals.
Hey, I never knew that! Consider my mind blown. 
IAMS ? Never heard of it. What does it stand for?
Since there are no pauses,
IAMS which is : … .- – … without pauses it is …—…
Which is same as SOS which is : … — …
However, I was in my college years a radio enthusiast with my own radio. The above confusion between IAMS and SOS may seem good on paper, but it is not likely to happen on radio. This is because, you learn the morse code not as individual dits or dahs - but you learn each letter as a complete sound. So S (…) - has a certain rhythm to it -I don’t know if I explained that clearly.
I thought of that. Lady who lives above me is crazy as shit. (will post thread about that soon). Lady under me is 98 years old, half deaf and sleeps most of the time.
Well it’s not likely to happen on radio as no one that knows morse would forget the pauses.
You are much better off tapping out:
…—… [pause]…—…
I’m 99% sure id recognize as SOS (say strobe like light pattern):
…—… …—… …—…
Say 30% sure I’d recognize as SOS:
…—…—…—…
As in my mind - no morse letter is that long - so my brain would ignore it.
If I saw:
…—…—…—…
I do not think I’d notice it as a distress signal.
I’d say maybe 10%
But without the pauses the second two are just a pattern to me. The fact that there is a pause is what draws my attention to it as being possible morse.
Of course this would depend on where I was - and what it was.
If I heard my neighbor tapping it - I probably would figure any of them out - as usually I don’t hear anything. If I was walking through a hotel floor I was unfamiliar with - I’m pretty sure I’d only notice the first one.
Morse code, actually the radio method to send it CW (continuous wave) is very efficient. There are ham geeks who with a transistor or two and a 9V radio battery have communicated with the other side of the world (depends on time of year/day/sunspots/atmospherics/antennas/lots of skill/lots of time). in an emergency minimal complexity/size radios can be used.
also as mentioned the code can be used with many binary transmission means of on/off.
in radio services it is currently used for identification. radio transmitters legally need to identify them self at a fixed interval. radio beacons, repeaters, fixed channel licenses will send an automatic identification in code to meet this requirement with minimal disruption to the other information being communicated.
Oblicatory Far Side Cartoon. Helf
My brother joined the merchant navy as a radio officer back in the 60s. Morse was essential then for long distance communication (I think they bounced the signal off the ionosphere).
He took great pride in his transmission speed, but the guys at Portishead, from where the weather information, and company communications came, were faster. They certainly did not listen to dots and dashes, any more than we listen to every syllable of every word that we hear. As far as he was concerned it was more akin to a foreign language.
The transmission keys they used were not like the ones you see in films, but were moved side to side (a bug?) one way sent dashes automatically and the other was tapped to send dots.
Edit - I found this http://www.vk5sw.com/Beginner’s%20Morse%20Code.htm