Inside the Supreme Court chamber of the U.S. Capitol on May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse sat down to make history. The moment was the culmination of more than 12 years of work, and it was only in the past year that Morse had finally convinced Congress to fund a $30,000 experimental project. After spending that past year snaking 40 miles of telegraph wire along a railway stretching from the nation's capital to a train depot in Baltimore, Morse finally placed his hand on the telegraph key and tapped:
"What Hath God Wrought?"
The question was an apt one because with that collection of dots and dashes, Morse had effectively opened the floodgates of the information age. Within a decade, 23,000 miles of telegraph wire criss-crossed the U.S., and in 1866—six years before Morse's death—the first transatlantic wire connected America with Great Britain. Information that once took weeks or even months to reach its intended recipient, now took only seconds.
Over time, Morse's invention lost technological relevance with the dawn of radio and telephones, but that special collection of dots and dashes (or "dits" and "dahs") remained instrumental in military communications, especially during World War II and the Vietnam War. In fact, in 1966, naval commander Jeremiah Denton, then a prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese, delivered a secret message by blinking the word "TORTURE" in Morse code during an interview with a Japanese journalist.
But with the arrival of the internet, Morse code quickly receded from public life. The Federal Communications Commission dropped the requirement to learn Morse code for beginner amateur radio operators in 1991, the Coast Guard stopped using it 1995, and the requirement for ships at sea to scan for Morse code distress signals ended in 1999. By all accounts, Morse's groundbreaking innovation was destined for the technological dustbin.
But, surprisingly, that didn't happen.
Instead, Morse code became a small but vibrant part of the amateur (or ham) radio community. Hikers began taking small transceivers to the tops of mountain peaks to transmit dits and dahs, entire communities were established to preserve the art of Morse code, and even Google—the poster child of the modern information age—created tools to combine Morse code with machine learning to help give a voice to people with disabilities.
Here's how Morse code works, the best method for learning (and crucially understanding) these dots and dashes, how to increase your words per minute (wpm) with easy-to-use apps, and recommendations for the best radio gear to get you started. |
Inside the Supreme Court chamber of the U.S. Capitol on May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse sat down to make history. The moment was the culmination of more than 12 years of work, and it was only in the past year that Morse had finally convinced Congress to fund a $30,000 experimental project. After spending that past year snaking 40 miles of telegraph wire along a railway stretching from the nation's capital to a train depot in Baltimore, Morse finally placed his hand on the telegraph key and tapped:
"What Hath God Wrought?"
The question was an apt one because with that collection of dots and dashes, Morse had effectively opened the floodgates of the information age. Within a decade, 23,000 miles of telegraph wire criss-crossed the U.S., and in 1866—six years before Morse's death—the first transatlantic wire connected America with Great Britain. Information that once took weeks or even months to reach its intended recipient, now took only seconds.
Over time, Morse's invention lost technological relevance with the dawn of radio and telephones, but that special collection of dots and dashes (or "dits" and "dahs") remained instrumental in military communications, especially during World War II and the Vietnam War. In fact, in 1966, naval commander Jeremiah Denton, then a prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese, delivered a secret message by blinking the word "TORTURE" in Morse code during an interview with a Japanese journalist.
But with the arrival of the internet, Morse code quickly receded from public life. The Federal Communications Commission dropped the requirement to learn Morse code for beginner amateur radio operators in 1991, the Coast Guard stopped using it 1995, and the requirement for ships at sea to scan for Morse code distress signals ended in 1999. By all accounts, Morse's groundbreaking innovation was destined for the technological dustbin.
But, surprisingly, that didn't happen.
Instead, Morse code became a small but vibrant part of the amateur (or ham) radio community. Hikers began taking small transceivers to the tops of mountain peaks to transmit dits and dahs, entire communities were established to preserve the art of Morse code, and even Google—the poster child of the modern information age—created tools to combine Morse code with machine learning to help give a voice to people with disabilities.
Here's how Morse code works, the best method for learning (and crucially understanding) these dots and dashes, how to increase your words per minute (wpm) with easy-to-use apps, and recommendations for the best radio gear to get you started. |
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