Morse Code

 ​​What is Morse Code?

In simple words, Morse code is a language that communicates through a series of on-off signals, this can be tones, clicks or light flashes. Morse code is a system of communication developed by Samuel F.B. Morse for electrical telegraphy in the 1830's. 

It represents letters of the alphabet, numbers and punctuation marks as a series of dots, spaces and dashes. The shortcoming with the original morse code was that it was unable to transmit non-english text since it lacked code for letters with diacritic marks (letters that contain apostrophe marks), to remedy this a variant called the International Morse Code was developed in 1851. 

Also called as the continental morse code, since its inception, except for a few changes made in 1938 the code remains the same. It incorporated uniform dash lengths and eliminated the use of spaces in letters being communicated. 

Morse code was employed heavily in the communication of World War II and is used even today for various military communications. An amateur radio communication operator is required to learn fluency in this language to obtain a license to operate a radio apparatus from home. Morse code though has dropped in its popularity due to other systems of communication still finds its use in disaster prone areas and disaster management as well as to communicate remotely in the absence of other systems of communication.