Morse code encodes the 26 English letters A through Z, some non-English letters, the Arabic numerals and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals. Each Morse code symbol is formed by a sequence of dots and dashes. The most common distress signal is SOS – three dots, three dashes, and three dots – internationally recognized by treaty.
About Morse code in brief
The International Morse Code encodes the 26 English letters A through Z, some non-English letters, the Arabic numerals and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals. There is no distinction between upper and lower case letters. Each Morse code symbol is formed by a sequence of dots and dashes. The most common distress signal is SOS – three dots, three dashes, and three dots – internationally recognized by treaty. Morse code can be memorized, and Morse code signalling in a form perceptible to the human senses, such as sound waves or visible light, can be directly interpreted by persons trained in the skill. In Morse code, a deflection of the needle to the left corresponded to a dot and adeflection to the right to a dash. The Morse code transmission rate is specified in groups per minute, commonly referred to as words per minute. It 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 dot or dash and absent during the time between dots andDots. The duration of a dash is three times theduration of a dot. 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 ‘E’, has the shortest code: a single dot. It can be generated by improvised methods such as turning a light on and off, tapping on an object or sounding a horn or whistle, making it one of the simplest and most versatile methods of telecommunication.
The original Morse telegraph used a mechanical clockwork to move a moving tape onto a moving paper tape. When an electrical current was received, the tape was pushed onto the moving tape and the tape received an electric current. The first Morse system for telegraphy was designed to make indentations on a paper tape which was used in about 1844, when the first electric currents were received. In 1841, Morse’s original telegraph receiver used an arm that pushed a moving stylus onto the paper tape, making the first electrical currents received when the paper was moved onto the tape when the arm was pushed by an electromagnet. This led to the development of the Morse system, which was designed by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in Britain and used on the London and Birmingham Railway. They obtained an English patent for the first commercial telegraph in June 1837 and demonstrated it on the first English Railway making it the first commercially successful telegraph. In June 1839, Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber used Morse codes with varying word lengths for their telegraphs for their commercial te Telegraphs. Around 1837, Morse, therefore, developed an early forerunner to the modern International Morse code. The American artist Samuel F. B. Morse, the American physicist Joseph Henry, and Alfred Vail developed an electrical telegraph system. It needed a method to transmit natural language using only electrical pulses.
You want to know more about Morse code?
This page is based on the article Morse code published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 21, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
