April 27th: Morse Code Day

Morse Code Day Commemorates the birthday of Samuel Morse. Here are 10 things you may not know about Morse Code:

1. The inventor of Morse Code, Samuel Morse, was a portrait painter before becoming an inventor of telegraph systems.
2. Although the code uses the standard 26 letter alphabet and Arabic numerals, there are extensions for languages with more than 26 letters in their alphabets.
3. The basic unit of measurement within the code is the duration of the "dot" signal.
4. A dash is three times the length of a dot; the silence between the dots and dashes is the length of a dot; the silence between words is the length of three dots (or a dash) and the space between words is seven dots.
5. The length of each character in Morse is approximately inversely proportional to its frequency of occurrence in English. The most common letter in English, the letter "E," therefore has the shortest code, a single dot.
6. Originally, only numbers were going to be used and operators would have to look up words in a dictionary. The idea of expanding it to use letters was introduced by Alfred Vail.
7. Initially, code translations were to be written down and transcribed, but it became obvious in time that it was easier to learn Morse Code by sounds than as a written language.
8. Probably the best known Morse code rhythm is the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which was used regularly during the Second World War at the beginning of BBC broadcasts. The timing of the notes sound like the Morse for "V"; di-di-di-dah and stood for "V for Victory".
9. Morse code was replaced by the Global Maritime Distress Safety System in 1999, so it was no longer used as a standard form of radio communication. Nowadays its use is the preserve of historical enactment enthusiasts or visually, during radio silences. It is also used by severely disabled people, who can communicate simply by blowing and sipping a computer interface, which translates it into speech.
10. 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." In the United States the final commercial Morse Code transmission was on July 12, 1999, signing off with Samuel Morse's original 1844 message, "What hath God wrought", and the prosign "SK".