Morse code

“ Incredibly intricate traceries of telegraph wires swarmed overhead, crossing and recrossing at all angles, slanting upward into offices and flats or downward to stores, a reminder that no urban family with pretensions to gentility would be without the clacking instrument in the parlor, that every child learned the Morse code before he could read. Thousands of sparrows considered the wires properly their own ”

“ The General Service Code, also called the Continental and the International Morse Code, is the code used by the Army and Navy, cables, wireless telegraphy, and all commercial communications except short distance telegraphing, within the United States. Avoid the term International Morse as both these names apply to other codes. The International code is made up of flags each one of which stands for a letter or other signal, and the Morse is used of the American Morse or telegraph alphabet. There is Visual signalling by hand flag torches, lanterns, etc. ”

“ The Morse Code is largely used in America, and a modification of it, called the Continental Code, in Europe. When the wireless operator wishes to send a message to another station he “listens in,” as it is called, by connecting his receiving apparatus with the adjacent antenna and the ground. He has the telephone receiver attached to his ears. Next he adjusts his receiving circuits for a number of wave lengths. If he catches no signals in his telephone receiver he understands that no messages are being sent within his area. ”

“ Skill in learning to take messages either in code or cipher comes with practice. The more you work at it the faster you can go. You have a keyboard all installed and the only thing standing between you and an expert operator is patience. Speed comes sooner than you think, too, if you practice persistently every day. As for the Morse code you press the key lever down quickly and instantly release it to make a dot. ”

“ Early in the history of the telegraph short lines began to be used for private purposes, and as the Morse code was familiar only to those who had studied it and were expert operators on commercial lines, some system had to be devised that any one with an ordinary English education could use; as the expense of employing two Morse operators would be too great for all ordinary business enterprises. ”

“ Something good, I hope."
"Is that Morse code hard to learn?" inquired Nancy.
"The Morse Continental? That depends on what you consider hard," smiled Bob. "If your memory is good and you are quick at catching sounds it ought not to be very awful. Numberless persons do learn it."
"Of course sending messages after you have the code learned cannot be so bad, for you can take your own time," Dick put in. "It is receiving them that would fuss me."
"We'll fix you up with a buzzer and let you and Walter practice later if you want a try." ”

“ But ridicule and invective are not argument, prejudice is not proof. “Some of our friends,” we used to be told in our childhood, “are for warning, others for example.” Taking those we have quoted for warning, let us give a fair and open-minded consideration to Mrs. Gallup’s claims.
To do this it will be necessary to describe Bacon’s Biliteral Cipher. His own description of it may be seen in any edition of his De Augmentis. Its principle is extremely simple, being, in fact, that of the Morse Code at present used in telegraphy—namely, various combinations of two differences. ”

“ Written matter could be transmitted with even greater safety than messages which are sent in the ordinary way in Morse Code, as the signals received in the receiver {36}of an hostile installation would be but a meaningless jumble of sounds, and even were they possessed of radio-photographic apparatus the received message would be unintelligible, unless they knew the exact speed at which the machines were running and could synchronise accurately. ”

“ In 1911, Western Union began investigating systems used in Europe. The first to be tested was the Creed, a system for transmitting and printing Continental or Morse code signals at high speed. After observing several other systems, the Murray Multiplex, an improved and modernized version of the Baudot Multiplex, was found to show better operating features and, due to the use of the five-unit permutation code, more efficient use of telegraph lines. ”

“ Such systems, over the years, while not so rapidly as today, were also improved upon, modified, speeded up, but could be used only in the point-to-point transmission of messages.
While the railroads had been using the Morse code system (key and sounder) satisfactorily, they would have preferred a system whereby a printed record could be obtained. In the industrial world, too, there was need for a businessman’s printing telegraph—a means to type out messages, directly and interchangeably, to far-off associates. ”

“ If we could, by operating an ordinary telegraphic key, cause the lightning to discharge from cloud to earth, and some one was listening at a telephone in a circuit that was grounded at both ends 100 miles or more distant from the cloud, the man who controlled the discharges by the key could transmit the Morse code through the earth to the man who was listening at the telephone. Thousands of people might be listening at telephones in every direction from the transmitting-station, and they would all get the same message. ”

“ Ellis could signal us that way by the Morse code. He could tell us right at the moment what he remembers, before he returns to his body and forgets."
"If you'll fix up such a device, I'll try the thing again!" I promised. ”

“ A message in the usual Morse code has dots, dashes and spaces, each produced by depressing a key for a short, a long, or a longer period. Mr. Burke interrupts a current with a key solely with dot-intervals; the periods during which the current is unbroken are, according to their length, dot-signals, dash-signals, or spaces:—
Continental Morse Code.
[355]
CHAPTER XXIV
THEORIES HOW REACHED AND USED Educated guessing . . . Weaving power . . . Imagination indispensable . . . The proving process . . . Theory gainfully directs both observation and experiment . . . Professor Tyndall’s views . . . ”

“ On Monday, the 12th, we had a signalling competition amongst the companies. Each company had been teaching all the men the semaphore code. It is a good thing to start with, but at the Front they use only the Morse system. ”

“ Whistler first asked, scanning the paper seriously. “That appears curious to me.”
“Not in this case. If it is Lil sending—or whoever it is—the sender is so unfamiliar with the Morse American code that there is a hesitation between the letters. Why, I thought at first the message was in Continental code, which is, you know, entirely different from American.”
“It’s all news to me, old boy. Go on.”
“Why, there’s nothing more. If I could hear those words repeated several times I reckon I’d get most of the letters—and get them straight.” ”

“ Bacon calls this the “omnia per omnia,” the all in all cipher, and speaks of it as an invention of his own made while at the Court of France, when he was but 16 or 18 years of age.
This cipher and its obvious adaptations, it is stated, is the basis of nearly every alphabetical cipher code in present general use—the alternating dot and dash of the Morse telegraph code, the long and short exposure of light in the heliographic telegraph and the “wig-wag” signals of flags or lights in the armies and navies of the world. ”

“ To decipher the message, a special code-book or dictionary would be required. In order to transmit the currents through the line, he devised a mechanical sender, in which the circuit would be interrupted by a series of types carried on a port-rule or composing-stick, which travelled at a uniform speed. ”

“ It was rather unfortunate and curious, in view of Morse's love of simplicity, that he at first insisted on using the dots and dashes to indicate numbers only, the numbers to correspond to words in a specially prepared dictionary. His arguments in favor of this plan were specious, but the event has proved that his reasoning was faulty. His first idea was that the telegraph should belong to the Government; that intelligence sent should be secret by means of a kind of cipher; that it would take less time to send a number than each letter of each word, especially in the case of the longer words ”

“ This is a form of the substitution cipher which requires the preparation, in advance, of a code book. A series of terms likely to be used in future correspondence (that is, words, phrases, and even sentences) is first gathered into a vocabulary, or “dictionary”; and beside each of these terms is placed a substitute known as a code group, or code word. These substitutes [page 2] may be groups of letters, or groups of digits, or actual words selected from ordinary language. Very common words or expressions are usually provided with more than one substitute ”

“ It's impossible to read it without the key. Has the office ever used a cipher code?"
"Just what I was asking," said the m.e. "Hustle everybody up that ought to know. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently got hold of something big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he wouldn't have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this."
Throughout the office of the Enterprise a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. ”

“ He who discovers a principle and devises one mode by which the same can be rendered practically useful, is entitled to a patent which shall protect him to the full extent of his invention and against all other devices for using it.
If Morse, therefore, was the first to discover that the power of electro-magnetism could be used for the purpose of recording telegraphic signs, and devised one practical mode for using it, he may, by a general claim, secure to himself the right of so applying it, as well as the particular devices by which he did so. ”

“ If, for instance, one should receive the combination ..... he would know exactly where to look for combinations of dots and could therefore quickly find the letter equivalent. Again, if one received — — — . . . he would know that this combination must be near the bottom of the chart since the code begins with three dashes. One will find that even without a knowledge of the code it is possible to receive messages at fair rate of speed, and it should not be long before one gains a working knowledge with out the bother of tedious study. ”

“ Rizzo snapped, sitting up on the bunk.
"What?"
"Binary code. To send a signal like this, they've gotta be able to write a message in units that're only a billionth of a second long. That takes computers. Right? Well, if they have computers, they must figure that we have computers. Digital computers run on binary code. Off or on ... go or no-go. It's simple. I'll bet we can slap that signal on a tape and run it through our computer here." ”

“ As Morse says in a letter to Mr. Kendall, of August 3, 1860, after he had consented to a reference of the matter to three persons: "I have no apprehensions of the result except that I may be entrapped by some legal technicalities. Look at the case in an equitable point of view and, it appears to me, no intelligent, just men could give a judgment against me or in his favor. Smith's purchase into the telegraph, the consideration he gave, was his efforts to obtain a property in the invention abroad by letters patent or otherwise. ”

“ I have just filed a caveat for one which I have invented, which as far transcends in simplicity and efficiency any previous plan for the purpose, as my telegraph system is superior to the old visual telegraphs. I will have it in operation by the time you return."
Apropos of the attacks made upon him by would-be infringers, the following from a letter of his legal counsel, Daniel Lord, Esq., dated January 12, 1847, may not come amiss: "It ought to be a source of great satisfaction to you to have your invention stolen and counterfeited. ”

“ In 1847 Morse was compelled to defend his invention in the courts, and successfully vindicated his claim to be called the original inventor of the electromagnetic recording telegraph. In 1858 the representatives of Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, the Holy See, Sweden, Tuscany and Turkey appropriated the sum of 400,000 francs in recognition of the use of his instruments in those countries. He died on the 2nd of April 1872, at New York, where his statue in bronze now stands in the Central Park. (See Telegraph.) ”

“ Morse, who regarded the record as the distinctive feature of his invention, was very hostile to the practice; but Nature was too many for him. The mode of interpreting by sound was the easier and more economical of the two; and Vail, with his mechanical instinct, adopted it. He produced an instrument in which there is no paper or marking device, and the message is simply sounded by the lever of the armature striking on its metal stops. At present the Morse recorder is rarely used in comparison with the 'sounder.'
The original telegraph of Morse, exhibited in 1837, has become an archaic form. ”

“ His application for a patent, in April, 1838, was preceded by a series of experiments, results, illustrations and proofs of final success, which leave no doubt whatever but that his great invention was consummated before the early spring of 1837. There is no one person, whose invention has been spoken of by any witness, or referred to in any book as involving the principle of Mr. Morse's discovery, but must yield precedence of date to this. Neither Steinheil, nor Cooke and Wheatstone, nor Davy, nor Dyar, nor Henry, had at this time made a recording telegraph of any sort. ”