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Way back in 1836, Samuel F. B. Morse, along with Joseph Henry and Alfred Vail, invented an electrical system. Before telephones were invented, it could send messages over long distances by using of electricity to signal a machine to make marks on a moving paper tape.

A was necessary to help the marks on the paper tape into readable text messages. Morse developed the first version of this .

His version included only numbers. Vail soon expanded it to include letters and a few special characters, such as punctuation marks.

The - known as Morse - assigned each number, letter or special character a unique of short and long signals called "dots" and "dashes."

In Morse transmission , the short dot signal is the basic time measurement. A long dash signal is equal to three dots. Each dot or dash is followed by a short silence that's equal to a dot.

If you wonder how they decided which combination of signals was assigned to each letter, they studied how often each letter in the English language was used.

The most used letters were given the shorter sequences of dots and dashes. For example, the most commonly used letter in the English language - E - is represented by a single dot.

The original machines made a clicking noise as they marked the moving paper tape. The paper tape eventually became unnecessary.

operators soon learned that they could the clicks directly into dots and dashes. Later, operators were trained in Morse by studying it as a language that was heard rather than read from a page.

Although Morse originally referred to signals as dots and dashes, operators began to vocalize dots as "dits" and dashes as "dahs" to mimic the sound of Morse receivers.

Today, it's possible to transmit messages in Morse in any way that dots and dashes can be communicated. This includes sounds and lights, as well as printed dots and dashes.

Morse was for communication during World War II. It was also used as an international for communication at sea until 1999, when it was replaced by the Global Safety System. The new system takes advantage of advances in technology, such as satellite communication.

Today, Morse remains popular with radio operators around the world. It is also commonly used for emergency signals. It can be sent in a variety of ways with improvised devices that can be switched easily on and off, such as flashlights.

The international Morse signal ( · · · - - - · · · ) was first used by the German government in 1905 and became the signal around the world just a few years later. The repeated pattern of three dots followed by three dashes was easy to remember and chosen for its simplicity.

In Morse , three dots form the letter S and three dashes form the letter O, so SOS became a way to remember the of the . Later, SOS was associated with certain phrases, such as "save our ship" and "save our souls."

These were just easy ways to remember SOS, though. The letters themselves have no such meaning.

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Way back in 1836, Samuel F. B. Morse, along with Joseph Henry and Alfred Vail, invented an electrical system. Before telephones were invented, it could send messages over long distances by using of electricity to signal a machine to make marks on a moving paper tape.

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By 1837 Morse had developed a working one-wire model. It produced a zig-zag line on a strip of ticker tape, the dips of which could be decoded into letters and numbers with a special dictionary composed by Morse himself.

But it was Alfred Vail, a friend from New York University, who deserves much of the credit for what came next. At his family's iron works in Speedwell, New Jersey, Vail made changes that resulted in a stylus that lifted up from the tape, leaving dots and dashes instead of a continuous line. According to Franklin T Pope, later a partner of Thomas Edison, Vail also simplified Morse's awkward lookup system, using shorter codes for commonly used letters. The resulting system was much better; it did not require printing and instead could be 'sound read'.

Regardless of who deserves the credit, in 1838, at an exhibition in New York, Morse transmitted 10 words per minute using what would forever be known as Morse code. In 1843, he received money from Congress to build a line from Baltimore to Washington DC, and, on 24 May 1844, sent the first inter-city message: "What hath God wrought!" By 1854 there were 23,000 miles of telegraph wire in operation across the US.

Morse code was later adapted to wireless radio. By the 1930s it was the preferred form of communication for aviators and seamen, and it was vital during the Second World War.
Answered by Dan Cossins, freelance writer. This Q&A first appeared in the December 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine.

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Q&A: Samuel Morse invented the Morse code, but how did he do it, how long did it take, and how long before it was accepted?

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By 1837 Morse had developed a working one-wire model. It produced a zig-zag line on a strip of ticker tape, the dips of which could be decoded into letters and numbers with a special dictionary composed by Morse himself. But it was Alfred Vail, a friend from New York University, who deserves much of the credit for what came next.

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Morse code is usually transmitted by information carrying medium such as electric current, radio waves, visible light or sound waves.  The current or wave is present during time period of the dot or dash and absent during the time between dots and dashes.  “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.”

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Morse code is a telecommunications method which encodes text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs.[3][4] Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the early developers of the system adopted for electrical telegraphy.

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By the end of the 19th century, new technologies began to emerge, many of them based on the same principles as the first developed for the telegraph system. In time, these new technologies would overshadow the telegraph, which would fall out of regular widespread usage. Although the telegraph has since been replaced by the even more convenient telephone, its invention stands as a turning point in world history.

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Early Forms of Long-Distance Communication

Before the development of the electric telegraph in the 19th century revolutionized how information was transmitted across long distances, ancient civilizations such as those in China, Egypt and Greece used drumbeats, signal fires or smoke signals to exchange information between far-flung points.

However, such methods were limited by the weather and the need for an uninterrupted line of sight between receptor points. These limitations also lessened the effectiveness of the semaphore, a modern precursor to the electric telegraph. Developed in the early 1790s, the semaphore consisted of a series of hilltop stations that each had large movable arms to signal letters and numbers and two telescopes with which to see the other stations.

Like ancient smoke signals, the semaphore was susceptible to weather and other factors that hindered visibility. A different method of transmitting information was needed to make regular and reliable long-distance communication workable.

Did you know? SOS, the internationally recognized distress signal, does not stand for any particular words. Instead, the letters were chosen because they are easy to transmit in Morse code: "S" is three dots, and "O" is three dashes.

The Electric Telegraph

In the early 19th century, two developments in the field of electricity opened the door to the production of the electric telegraph. First, in 1800, the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta invented the battery, which reliably stored an electric current and allowed the current to be used in a controlled environment.

Second, in 1820, the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted demonstrated the connection between electricity and magnetism by deflecting a magnetic needle with an electric current.

Samuel Morse

While scientists and inventors across the world began experimenting with batteries and the principles of electromagnetism to develop some kind of communication system, the credit for inventing the telegraph generally falls to two sets of researchers: William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in England, and Samuel Morse, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail in the United States.

In the 1830s, the British team of Cooke and Wheatstone developed a telegraph system with five magnetic needles that could be pointed around a panel of letters and numbers by using an electric current. Their system was soon being used for railroad signaling in Britain.

During this time period, the Massachusetts-born, Yale-educated Morse (who began his career as a painter), worked to develop an electric telegraph of his own. He reportedly had become intrigued with the idea after hearing a conversation about electromagnetism while sailing from Europe to America in the early 1830s, and later learned more about the topic from American physicist Joseph Henry.

In collaboration with Gale and Vail, Morse eventually produced a single-circuit telegraph that worked by pushing the operator key down to complete the electric circuit of the battery. This action sent the electric signal across a wire to a receiver at the other end. All the system needed was a key, a battery, wire and a receiver.

Morse Code

To transmit messages across telegraph wires, in the 1830s Morse and Vail created what came to be known as Morse code. The code assigned letters in the alphabet and numbers a set of dots (short marks) and dashes (long marks) based on the frequency of use; letters used often (such as "E") got a simple code, while those used infrequently (such as "Q") got a longer and more complex code.

Initially, the code, when transmitted over the telegraph system, was rendered as marks on a piece of paper that the telegraph operator would then translate back into English. Rather quickly, however, it became apparent that the operators were able to hear and understand the code just by listening to the clicking of the receiver, so the paper was replaced by a receiver that created more pronounced beeping sounds.

Western Union

In 1843, Morse and Vail received funding from the U.S. Congress to set up and test their telegraph system between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent Vail the historic first message: "What hath God wrought!" The telegraph system subsequently spread across America and the world, aided by further innovations.

Among these improvements was the invention of good insulation for telegraph wires. The man behind this innovation was Ezra Cornell, one of the founders of the university in New York that bears his name. Another improvement, by the famed inventor Thomas Edison in 1874, was the Quadruplex system, which allowed for four messages to be transmitted simultaneously using the same wire.

Use of the telegraph was quickly accepted by people eager for a faster and easier way of sending and receiving information. However, widespread and successful use of the device required a unified system of telegraph stations among which information could be transmitted.

The Western Union Telegraphy Company, founded in 1856 in part by Cornell, was at first only one of many such companies that developed around the new medium during the 1850s. By 1861, however, Western Union had laid the first transcontinental telegraph line, making it the first nationwide telegraph company.

Rise and Decline of the Telegraph System

Telegraph systems, a key innovation during the Industrial Revolution, soon spread across the world. Extensive systems appeared across Europe by the later part of the 19th century, and by 1866 the first permanent telegraph cable had been successfully laid across the Atlantic Ocean; there were 40 such telegraph lines across the Atlantic by 1940.

The electric telegraph transformed how wars were fought, how money was sent and how newspapers conducted business. Rather than taking weeks to be delivered by horse-and-carriage mail carts, pieces of news could be exchanged between telegraph stations almost instantly. The telegraph also had a profound economic effect, allowing money to be "wired" across great distances.

Telegrams, often delivered to homes and businesses by delivery boys, were a popular way of communicating during the 1920s and 1930s, when long-distance calls were more expensive than a telegram. Western Union was famous for messages hand-delivered inside its signature yellow envelopes.

By the end of the 19th century, however, new technologies such as the telephone began to emerge. In time, these technologies would overshadow the telegraph, which would fall out of regular widespread usage.

In 2006, Western Union officially ended its telegram service after 150 years. Although the telegraph has since been replaced by the even more convenient telephone, fax machine and Internet, it laid the groundwork for the communications revolution that led to those later innovations.

Sources

Invention of the Telegraph. Library of Congress.
A History of Telegraphy. Pens.co.uk.
Telegram Passes Into History. Wired Magazine.

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Morse Code & Telegraph: Invention & Samuel Morse - HISTORY

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The telegraph and Morse code revolutionized long-distance communication after their invention in the 1800s by Samuel Morse and other inventors.

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Morse Code is a form of communication made by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail. Each letter of the alphabet is made up of combinations of dots and dashes.  Morse is the earliest type of digital communication.

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Morse Code - Engineering and Technology History Wiki

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The wireless telegraphy morse code sequences are derived from the wired telegraphy code and are shown in the sound summary below. Morse used in wireless telegraphy is colloquially known as CW (Continuous Wave). The practical use of morse code involves the use and recognition of many abbreviations, and as can be seen in the 1920's, there are 'short numercial' sequences defined.

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International Morse Code is more simpler and more precise. For example, the original Morse Code used patterns of dots and spaces to represent a few of the letters, where the International Morse Code uses combinations of dots and short dashes for all letters. So, the International Morse Code uses dashes of constant length rather than the variable lengths used in the original Morse Code.

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Table of Contents

How was Morse Code invented?

Is Morse Code still used?

How does Morse Code work?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Morse Code, either of two systems for representing letters of the alphabet, numerals, and punctuation marks by an arrangement of dots, dashes, and spaces. The codes are transmitted as electrical pulses of varied lengths or analogous mechanical or visual signals, such as flashing lights. One of the systems was invented in the United States by American artist and inventor Samuel F.B. Morse during the 1830s for electrical telegraphy. This version was further improved by American scientist and businessman Alfred Lewis Vail, Morse's assistant and partner. Soon after its introduction in Europe, it became apparent that the original Morse Code was inadequate for the transmission of much non-English text, since it lacked codes for letters with diacritic marks. To remedy this deficiency, a variant called the International Morse Code was devised by a conference of European nations in 1851. This newer code is also called Continental Morse Code.

The two systems are similar, but the International Morse Code is simpler and more precise. For example, the original Morse Code used patterns of dots and spaces to represent a few of the letters, whereas the International Morse uses combinations of dots and short dashes for all letters. In addition, the International Morse Code uses dashes of constant length rather than the variable lengths used in the original Morse Code.

The International Morse Code has, except for some minor changes in 1938, remained the same since its inception. (The American telegraph industry never abandoned the original Morse Code, and so its use continued until the spread of teleprinters in the 1920s and '30s.) International Morse Code was used in World War II and in the Korean and Vietnam wars. It was used heavily by the shipping industry and for the safety of the seas up until the early 1990s. Although amateur radio made up only a small part of Morse Code usage, it did prepare many hundreds of operators for military duty in communications. In the early 2000s most countries had dropped the ability to decipher Morse Code from the requirements for obtaining an amateur radio license.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica John P. Rafferty.

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Morse Code | Invention, History, & Systems

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Morse Code, either of two systems for representing letters of the alphabet, numerals, and punctuation marks by an arrangement of dots, dashes, and spaces. The codes are transmitted as electrical pulses of varied lengths or analogous mechanical or visual signals, such as flashing lights.