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Morse Code Enters The 21st Century

Posted by simoniker on from the twiki-twiki dept.

N8TWJ writes "The International Telecommunications Union has decided to bring Morse Code into the 21st century by adding the loved (or hated?) - at (@) symbol. Lets hope the spammers don't start sniffing 20 meters for da-dit-da-dit-dah-dit..." According to the article, Paul Rinaldo, chief technical officer for the American Radio Relay League, says: "It's a pretty big deal... there certainly hasn't been any change [in Morse Code characters] since before World War II."

15 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Cool, but not essential by Larry+David · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Obviously, morse code operators have had ways of getting around using 'at' signs for almost two hundred years, but it's a cool addition, and is as big a deal as they make out.

    I find morse code interesting because so many old timers complain about how the Internet makes 'ppl tlk lk this' and say 'nce 2 c u l8r', but that sort of abbreviation has been used in Morse Code for decades! The typical banter you see on IRC or in SMS cellphone text messages is pretty tame compared to what those operators could pump out on the wires :-) If any Morse operators here have some good examples, do post!

  2. Rats... by The-Bus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    --_- -- -_- --- _ A -__- ___ --- _ A _- ___ A -__ -_ -- _ A _-- -_ __ _-

    (Check this link to translate: http://www.translatum.gr/converter/morse-code.htm) . Let's hope Slashdot's filter lets me post this.

    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

    1. Re:Rats... by FeriteCore · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Odd thing, I could only understand this by di-dahing quietly under my breath.

      When I was first learning code (mid 1970's) I had an ARRL practice tape. It introduced a few letters, had some practice, introduced some more letters etc.

      My father had been a US Navy communications officer in WWII, but left radio behind at the end of the war. He went straight thru the tape making extremly minimal errors. He was doing better after 30 years of not practicing than I was doing after hours of practicing.

      Some people are impressed by their parents.

      DE WD4OMI

    2. Re:Rats... by mikeb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Morse is an aural language? Tell that to all the people who learned it to signal from ship to ship on an Aldis lamp! Not that I could EVER read lights, I have to hear the sounds to get it.

    3. Re:Rats... by MaxNerd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I learned cw listening to this old timer on 80 sending at 50, 40, 30 and finally 20wpm...By the time he got to 20, I felt like I was driving behind a bluehair in the fast lane. It's too bad the the requirement is down to 5wpm now. The code is quickly becoming something obscure that people view as something that only telegraph operators use.

      Some people are impressed by old people. hihi

      DE KE4VYS

  3. wrong spelling.... by pe1rxq · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to the article:

    The new sign, which will be known as a "commat," consists of the signals for "A" (dot-dash) and "C" (dash-dot-dash-dot), with no space between them.

    This means that the @ is: dit-da-da-dit-da-dit so I don't mind the spammers listning for da-dit-da-dit-da-dit :)

    Jeroen

    --
    Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
  4. spelling it out is faster? by edwinolson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wouldn't spelling as a-t it out be shorter/faster?

    at = dit dah, dah
    @ = dit dah dah dit dah dit

    Or does an inter-symbol pause really take as along as 3 symbols?

  5. Nobody is listening by daBass · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While it is cool and all that, forget sending your email address as morse code when your ship is in trouble because nobody is listening!.

    1. Re:Nobody is listening by Jackdaw+Rookery · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you're interested in how the current Mayday system is used ship to shore take a look at; http://www.hmcoastguard.co.uk/comms/mayday.php

  6. Morse is an early data compression standard by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Morse code is an early variable-length data compression stanard (similar to Huffman codes or Shannon-Fano codes). By representing common letters with shorter codes ("E = "," and "T" = "-") and rare letters with longer codes ("Z" = "--.." an "Q" = "--.-"), Morse code manages to encode the 26 letters of the alphabet in 4 bits maximum and much less than 4 bits per letter on average.

    Although Morse did use letter frequencies in constructing his code, it is not a truely optimized code, from what I can tell. Numbers are encoded with a cumbersome 5 bits per digit. Also, the transmission time of messages might be further reduced with minor rearrangements of the code to use more dots (short transmission time) in more frequent letters and more dashes (long transmission time) in the less frequent letters.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  7. Kernel panics by gohai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Morse codes can be quite useful, even today.
    There is a Linux kernel patch floating around (IIRC it was in -ac, don't know about mainstream) that adds the output of kernel panics via keyboard LEDs. Nice for early oopses.

  8. Doesn't this point out a problem in Cryptonomicon? by Ratface · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The main character in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon uses his keyboards LEDs to read a set of documents about cryptography. He uses the LEDs to spell out the documents in Morse code and writes some code using his space key as a morse tapper.

    However, looking at the Morse chart he would have a problem writing code and reading mathematical notations with the limitations of the Morse alphabet.

    I'd never thought about that before! You're owned Stephenson ;-)

    --

    A little planning goes a long way...
  9. End of contact (...-.-) by Anders+Andersson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are a number of morse code symbols that don't correspond to graphical letters, digits or interpunctuation; you may say that they are similar to ASCII control characters in denoting things such as "end of message".

    Problem is, when you listen to and take down morse code by hand, you need an easy way to indicate those control symbols too. When I had some morse training in the 1970's (voluntary after-school classes), we used "+" to indicate "end of message" (.-.-.) and (surprise) "@" for "end of contact" (...-.-)...

    I don't know whether "@" was in common use for that purpose or if it was just my teacher's idea. To me, @ thus meant "end of communication, time to do something else" long before I learned about spam!

  10. Chinese Morse Code? by 4of12 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have to ask: with so many thousands of glyphs in Chinese, what did they do to utilize telegraph lines when that was the only means for fast long distance communication?

    I'm assuming they didn't create a different sequence for each one....

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  11. Morse is a terrible code by pclminion · · Score: 3, Interesting
    First: it's ambiguous. You can interpret a particular series of da/dit in multiple ways. Sure, a human can figure out from context, but what about a computer?

    Second: it's inefficient. It's a binary code (dit and da) and yet it's redundant. The Shannon entropy for English is lower than the calculated average message length for Morse. They should be using a Huffman code.

    Suggestion: Create a Huffman code from well-known English letter frequencies. When constructing this code, always put the more-common subtree on the left side of the new Huffman node. Then, when translating to das and dits, always use dit for a left-going branch and da for a right-going branch (dit = 0, da = 1). This accounts for the fact that the "da" symbol takes longer to transmit than "dit".

    The result won't be Morse code, but we could name it something else... "Huffman-Morsoid," or say, "Horse code."