Morse Code

The Morse code was developed for communication via telegraph lines by Samuel Morse (1791 - 1872). Messages are coded letter by letter using short and long signals according to Morse's alphabet. A set of punctuators and various control characters are also part of the alphabet.

Symbols will be separated by a long pause having the same duration as long signals. The separation within a symbol takes the same time than short signals. The usage of two different pauses is necessary because the Morse code is not a prefix code, the separation between symbols cannot be derived from the code's structure.

international Morse codes (excerpt):

   a   ·-         ã   ·-·-
   b   -···       c   -·-·
   ch  ----       d   -··
   e   ·          f   ··-·
   g   --·        h   ····
   i   ··         j   ·---
   k   -·-        l   ·-··
   m   --         n   -·
   o   ---        ö   ---·
   p   ·--·       q   --·-
   r   ·-·        s   ···
   t   -          u   ··-
   ü   ··--       v   ···-
   w   ·--        x   -··-
   y   -·--       z   --··
   å   ·--·-      é   ··-··
   ñ   --·-

   1   ·----
   2   ··---
   3   ···-
   4   ····-
   5   ·····
   6   -····
   7   --···
   8   ---··
   9   ----·
   0   -----

            Comma    --··--
           Period    ·-·-·-
            Colon    ---···
           Hyphen    -····-
       Apostrophe    ·----·
         Brackets    -·--·-
    Question mark    ··--··
   Quotation mark    ·-··-·
       Underscore    ··--·-
     Fraction bar    -··-·
            Start    -·-·-
              End    ·-·-·-
       Understood    ···-·
            Error    ········
    Invitation to
         Transmit    -·-
             Wait    ·-···
              SOS    ···---···
       Repetition    ·· ··

The code mentioned above shall not represent the international standard. From the beginning many new symbols were added like the @. Besides different codes were already used in early times (e.g. the original American Morse code and the international Morse code).

The Morse code can be reagarded as one of the first technical implementations of a data compression algorithm. Some characters like 'e' will be encoded with short symbols (·) so a compression effect can be expected.