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The Tragic Origin Story of Morse Code · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: No, did you ever have to learn Morse code? No? God,
0:28
Speaker 1: that was not a very interesting responsible Let me make
0:30
Speaker 1: something up. Yeah, totally. When I was in cub Scouts
0:33
Speaker 1: and we went on a camping trip into the wilderness,
0:35
Speaker 1: so we had to want how to communicate by tapping
0:38
Speaker 1: our trees bark. Well. When I was back in Boy Scouts,
0:45
Speaker 1: one of the things that our troop leaders continually needled
0:50
Speaker 1: me about. They're always like, Ben, You're good at knots,
0:53
Speaker 1: you can find your way around in the woods, but you, uh,
0:56
Speaker 1: you gotta learn Morse code, buddy. It's just it's been
0:59
Speaker 1: too long, you know what I mean. You're eleven, now
1:02
Speaker 1: it's getting real. You've got to learn Morse code. And
1:05
Speaker 1: so eventually I learned Morse code, passed the test with it,
1:09
Speaker 1: and then promptly forgot it. Yeah. When you turn eleven,
1:12
Speaker 1: you get your first big boy bike and you learn
1:15
Speaker 1: Morse code, right right. And that's for late bloomers, uh,
1:18
Speaker 1: not for early adopters like our super producer Casey Pegrum.
1:23
Speaker 1: Give him a hand, folks. Today's episode is about Morse code,
1:30
Speaker 1: but more importantly, it's about the man himself, the Morseman.
1:35
Speaker 1: The Morseman. Not to be confused with some sort of norseman. No, no,
1:39
Speaker 1: that's a hard and yeah. Yeah, the man, the myth,
1:43
Speaker 1: the Morseman, the Morseman, Samuel Morseman morse So Samuel morse
1:48
Speaker 1: born April today. He is remembered primarily for the code
1:55
Speaker 1: system that bears his name, Morse Code. And everyone knows
1:58
Speaker 1: what that is. Casey, can we get just the little
2:00
Speaker 1: clip of how that would sound? There? You go perfect,
2:10
Speaker 1: So like a series of short beeps and then long ones.
2:13
Speaker 1: And if you're really good at it, you can do it.
2:15
Speaker 1: You know, I would do it more like dot dot
2:17
Speaker 1: dash dot dot dat. But if you're really good and
2:20
Speaker 1: you can work one of those little flipper paddle button
2:22
Speaker 1: things you know that you see in the old movies,
2:24
Speaker 1: you'd be pretty brett baby bree b ba ba by
2:27
Speaker 1: by know. I mean, like that's more a code a telegraph, yeah, telegraph,
2:30
Speaker 1: which he's also credited with. He didn't really invent it exactly,
2:33
Speaker 1: but he improved upon a previous design and made it
2:37
Speaker 1: much more useful in relaying information more or less instantaneously. Yeah,
2:42
Speaker 1: that's the thing. So most inventions that we think of
2:46
Speaker 1: as the the huge game changing innovations. Most of those
2:51
Speaker 1: are not going to be made up by one person
2:53
Speaker 1: working in isolation. You know what I mean. Multiple people
2:56
Speaker 1: exhibit parallel thinking. It's a phrase you enjoy, or you know,
3:00
Speaker 1: the whole idea of standing on the shoulders of giants
3:02
Speaker 1: and all that and improving, piggybacking on something that has
3:04
Speaker 1: come before and making it better, making it suit the times. Yes,
3:09
Speaker 1: that's correct. He he eventually improved, as he said, on
3:13
Speaker 1: this existing telegraph technology, famously sending the first telegraph message
3:19
Speaker 1: on May. But between his first day on the planet
3:25
Speaker 1: and that moment where he sends the first telegraph message,
3:29
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff happened, and not all of it
3:32
Speaker 1: was particularly pleasant. In fact, we could say that without
3:37
Speaker 1: great personal tragedy, Morse code may not have ever come
3:41
Speaker 1: to be. And now and that first telegraph messages that
3:44
Speaker 1: more sent a little heavy, and then it's, uh, what
3:48
Speaker 1: hath god roch? That sounds sinister to me? I like it.
3:53
Speaker 1: It's better than ahoihoi, that's truehoihoi, which was what famously
3:58
Speaker 1: Mr Burns sent on the first ever telephone call, right
4:01
Speaker 1: right so before Samuel Morse was known for his inventions,
4:07
Speaker 1: Way back when Morse was just a regular surname. This
4:11
Speaker 1: guy had a completely different job, didn't he He did.
4:15
Speaker 1: He went to Yale um and when he graduated was
4:19
Speaker 1: his degree in ben Did you catch that well? He
4:22
Speaker 1: studied several different things. He studied religious philosophy, mathematics, and
4:27
Speaker 1: equestrian science, which is so interesting because he went into
4:31
Speaker 1: none of those fields. Upon graduating from Yale, he became
4:35
Speaker 1: a quite well regarded portrait painter. And a piece that
4:39
Speaker 1: he did I was not aware of this at all.
4:41
Speaker 1: His work is pretty breathtaking. He has one piece called
4:45
Speaker 1: Dying Hercules that has that kind of Caravaggio esque look
4:49
Speaker 1: of like some of the Italian masters, like real charge
4:52
Speaker 1: scuro lighting Like this dude is heavily ripped, massive pectorals
4:57
Speaker 1: and eight pack kind of back in the throw of agony,
5:00
Speaker 1: leaning up against some rocks. Hercules um holding up this
5:03
Speaker 1: kind of like sheet as though or like a wing.
5:06
Speaker 1: And it's really breathtaking epics stuff. And he received some
5:09
Speaker 1: note from that work, and um got some really pretty
5:13
Speaker 1: big name commissions as a painter. It's interesting because this
5:17
Speaker 1: was a masterpiece early in his life. It's typically called
5:20
Speaker 1: his early masterpiece. And just a side note, he did
5:24
Speaker 1: a sculpture of this first, and he based the painting
5:27
Speaker 1: on that sculpture. I didn't know that. That's pretty weird, right,
5:30
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of that technique, but I assume it's
5:33
Speaker 1: a common thing because this guy was a big deal painter.
5:37
Speaker 1: He ended up attracting the attention of notable artists at
5:41
Speaker 1: the time, such as Washington Allston, who wanted him to
5:44
Speaker 1: meet another artist named Benjamin West and along with Morse's father,
5:49
Speaker 1: Alston arranged for Morse to stay in England for three
5:54
Speaker 1: years to study painting, and eventually, by the end of
5:58
Speaker 1: eighteen eleven he is admitted to the Royal Academy and
6:02
Speaker 1: this is where he began producing things like dying hercules.
6:07
Speaker 1: He has some portraits that are in the National Portrait
6:09
Speaker 1: Gallery now, including a self portrait. Yeah, and I believe
6:13
Speaker 1: he did one of James Madison as well, and he
6:19
Speaker 1: was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Marquis de
6:23
Speaker 1: Lafayette UH in Washington in February of eighteen twenty five.
6:28
Speaker 1: Oh he also did John Adams and James Monroe UM
6:31
Speaker 1: and that was when unfortunately, tragically, his wife Lucretia fell
6:38
Speaker 1: deathly ill yes, she fell ill just a month after
6:43
Speaker 1: giving birth to their third child, and she was located
6:48
Speaker 1: in new Haven, Connecticut, and he was in Washington in
6:52
Speaker 1: February of painting that portrait. So he dropped everything, ran
6:59
Speaker 1: ran back to New Haven as quickly as he could. Unfortunately,
7:05
Speaker 1: he was too late, and his wife passed at the
7:10
Speaker 1: young age of twenty five on February. And at this
7:15
Speaker 1: point the only way that he could receive notice of
7:17
Speaker 1: this would be through a written correspondence, a letter through
7:21
Speaker 1: the post, or word of mouth, or maybe somebody sending
7:24
Speaker 1: a corrier, you know what I mean. And yes, a
7:29
Speaker 1: corvey courier. So his father sent him a letter about
7:34
Speaker 1: his wife's illness, and Morse did not receive this letter
7:38
Speaker 1: for several days. He wrote to his wife two days
7:44
Speaker 1: after she had died, unaware that she had passed from
7:48
Speaker 1: this earth, and he was talking to her about the
7:51
Speaker 1: election of John Quincy Adams as president, his meeting with Lafayette,
7:56
Speaker 1: and then by the time he returned to New Haven,
7:58
Speaker 1: several days had passed since her burial. What would have
8:01
Speaker 1: been from Washington, d c. To New Haven, Connecticut in
8:05
Speaker 1: those days, which would have been by train, how would
8:08
Speaker 1: you have traveled. I wonder, it's an interesting questions. So
8:12
Speaker 1: the distance, if you're talking just a straight flight, the
8:15
Speaker 1: distance would be about two seventy three miles or fokos
8:21
Speaker 1: for you know, the rest of the world. So just
8:24
Speaker 1: for perspective, if someone were traveling on a train today
8:27
Speaker 1: on Amtrak, for instance, how how long would that journey take?
8:31
Speaker 1: I think only about five and a half hours or so,
8:33
Speaker 1: which kind of threw me because at first I when
8:35
Speaker 1: I read this, I misread and thought that he was
8:37
Speaker 1: much further away because he had spent a lot of
8:39
Speaker 1: time overseas, but he was in fact not that far,
8:42
Speaker 1: but still just the same, he needed the information instantly,
8:47
Speaker 1: and that is what led him to decide he needed
8:52
Speaker 1: to devise a way of doing this so other people
8:54
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to experience what he experienced, because he wrote
8:57
Speaker 1: a letter to his daughter after the pasting of his
9:00
Speaker 1: wife that was just really heartbreaking to read. Right, he said,
9:05
Speaker 1: you cannot know the depth of the wound that was
9:08
Speaker 1: inflicted when I was deprived of your dear mother, nor
9:11
Speaker 1: in how many ways that wound has been kept open.
9:14
Speaker 1: And when he learned of their death, he vowed to
9:19
Speaker 1: find some way to deliver important messages in a timely manner.
9:25
Speaker 1: And he would spend the next two decades perfecting this system.
9:30
Speaker 1: He didn't give up the art right away, but he
9:34
Speaker 1: continued kind of tinkering away at this side hustle. At
9:38
Speaker 1: the same time. Um, and it was an eight thirty
9:40
Speaker 1: two and he was on another voyage, a sea voyage
9:46
Speaker 1: to Europe. For from Europe rather back to the United States,
9:49
Speaker 1: that he met a very important gentleman for the evolution
9:53
Speaker 1: of what would be his kind of crowning achievement. Yes,
9:57
Speaker 1: Charles Thomas Jackson, Boston physician and scientists. And Jackson says
10:04
Speaker 1: to Morse, hey, check out this electromagnet I made. He
10:08
Speaker 1: had a rudimentary electromagnet, and Morse was inspired. And Morse thought,
10:14
Speaker 1: you know what, I what if I could send a
10:17
Speaker 1: message along a wire by opening and closing an electrical circuit,
10:23
Speaker 1: and then an electro magnet could record these uh blips
10:28
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper via some sort of dare
10:31
Speaker 1: I say a code? And yeah, right, And this is
10:39
Speaker 1: one of those I don't know at first, it's like
10:42
Speaker 1: a a cocktail napkin idea. You know, he's he's still
10:46
Speaker 1: what ifing to himself. But when he goes back to
10:50
Speaker 1: the US, when he disembarks from the trip, he moves
10:54
Speaker 1: forward with the idea and he meets another guy who
10:57
Speaker 1: works with electromagnets, a fellow named Joseph Henry. Yeah, and
11:02
Speaker 1: Joseph Henry was also working with the idea of electromagnetism,
11:06
Speaker 1: which is just quick and dirty. I'm no magnet scientists,
11:10
Speaker 1: but it is the idea of passing electric current into
11:13
Speaker 1: a magnet that turns on and off its magnetic abilities. Right, Yeah,
11:19
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not a magnet doctor either, but I
11:22
Speaker 1: like that phrase. But yeah, that's that's the basic gist.
11:31
Speaker 1: At this time, Morse still doesn't absolutely understand the nuts
11:36
Speaker 1: and bolts of how electromagnetism works. And it is Henry
11:40
Speaker 1: who explains the phenomenon of electromagnetism to Morse, and he
11:45
Speaker 1: also shows him the experimental electromagnets that he has built.
11:50
Speaker 1: And if you look at the electromagnets Morse later goes
11:57
Speaker 1: on to use, and the experimental ones that Joseph Henry
12:00
Speaker 1: aided there obviously the same design. He's um, well, you
12:05
Speaker 1: don't want to call it plagiarism, but he's riffing, well,
12:09
Speaker 1: but he did sue, I believe, yeah, yeah, later he
12:13
Speaker 1: did so and said, hey, that's my idea. You can
12:16
Speaker 1: you can read some of this, by the way, in
12:18
Speaker 1: a fantastic Smithsonian article called How Samuel Morse Got His
12:22
Speaker 1: Big Idea by Joseph Stromberg, and the Smithsonian has written
12:26
Speaker 1: a couple of things about the story of Morse because
12:29
Speaker 1: I don't remember if we mentioned this on air yet.
12:32
Speaker 1: Joseph Henry would later go on to become the first
12:34
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, So they have a little
12:38
Speaker 1: bit of steak in the game here story wise. So
12:41
Speaker 1: before he gets sued, Morse and Henry are are pretty
12:46
Speaker 1: good buds. They're having interesting conversations. Morse goes back to
12:50
Speaker 1: his home, which is now in New York, and in
12:52
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty seven he creates his first telegraph receiver. It's
12:57
Speaker 1: like I said, is kind of that that thing you
13:00
Speaker 1: see in some of these old the old pictures where
13:02
Speaker 1: it's like a button do you exactly on a spring
13:06
Speaker 1: and that colopens incloses the circuit to the decay. Yeah,
13:09
Speaker 1: when you do the taps, that's right, um, And that
13:11
Speaker 1: is pretty much what it looked like. And it got
13:13
Speaker 1: sort of streamlined over time and you can actually see
13:17
Speaker 1: this first ever versions prototype today at the American History Museum.
13:22
Speaker 1: And according to Harold Wallace, the curator of the American
13:25
Speaker 1: History Museum, the most interesting aspect of this is that
13:31
Speaker 1: he took an artist canvas stretcher and made it into
13:35
Speaker 1: a telegraph receiver. A canvas stretcher is what you used
13:38
Speaker 1: to to stretch the canvas over a frame and a
13:41
Speaker 1: fix it. So he was kind of given props to
13:43
Speaker 1: his old arts roots and to Wallace, this is symbolic
13:48
Speaker 1: of a shift from painter to telegrapher, all in one piece,
13:52
Speaker 1: one artifact. That's pretty cool, somewhat poetic. Right. So now
13:56
Speaker 1: he theoretically has a way to record these signal and
14:01
Speaker 1: he has to figure out how to transmit them. Right.
14:04
Speaker 1: He builds a receiver first, but he doesn't build a
14:06
Speaker 1: way to transmit it. So was the infrastructure already in
14:09
Speaker 1: place for this, because I mean this is obviously pre telephone, right,
14:12
Speaker 1: He had to work with some other people and this
14:15
Speaker 1: is where his colleagues Leonard Gail and Alfred Vail come
14:18
Speaker 1: into play. Over the next few years. After building this receiver, Morse,
14:23
Speaker 1: still a man on a mission, works to improve this system,
14:27
Speaker 1: and he uses veils, transmitter key, and a code of
14:32
Speaker 1: thoughts and dashes. This would be what becomes known as
14:36
Speaker 1: Morse code. And initially people said, okay, it could be
14:42
Speaker 1: potentially useful, but they had a hard time getting investors
14:47
Speaker 1: because of the infrastructure problem that you alluded to earlier.
14:51
Speaker 1: There's not a pre existing UH network of miles and
14:55
Speaker 1: miles and miles of wire. You would have to build
14:58
Speaker 1: it to send that signal. And that's something that we
15:02
Speaker 1: see with a lot of technology. One of the things
15:03
Speaker 1: people are talking about today with autonomous vehicles is how
15:07
Speaker 1: do you build a system in which they can exist?
15:09
Speaker 1: That's right, and so in the same way that we're
15:10
Speaker 1: doing small scale tests about times vehicles UH in private
15:14
Speaker 1: in these private companies and then gradually doing road tests,
15:17
Speaker 1: some of which have spectacularly failed. Um, they did that
15:21
Speaker 1: very thing to demonstrate to potential investors that this technology
15:24
Speaker 1: did work using short runs of wires instead of the
15:28
Speaker 1: kind that would have been strung miles and miles apart
15:30
Speaker 1: to make the technology actually useful across long distances. Yeah,
15:34
Speaker 1: that's a part of the story that I found endearing.
15:39
Speaker 1: They turned to Uncle Sam and they asked the US
15:42
Speaker 1: government for some scratch, some cheddar, some sweet sweet telegraph
15:47
Speaker 1: money just to construct this network, to lay these lines,
15:51
Speaker 1: to make this wire stuff happen. And the way that
15:55
Speaker 1: they convinced the government to fund it was through this
15:58
Speaker 1: sort of science fair pro They did a live demonstration
16:01
Speaker 1: within the capital and they strove wires up just between
16:04
Speaker 1: different rooms. You know what makes me think of um,
16:07
Speaker 1: there's a part in the new Red Dead Redemption game
16:10
Speaker 1: where the character you play, the cowboy I can't remember
16:13
Speaker 1: his names for some reason now, Arthur Morrigan, Arthur Morgan.
16:16
Speaker 1: Great game if you haven't played it. He happens upon
16:19
Speaker 1: an inventor who has these remote control boats that are
16:23
Speaker 1: like little battleship kind of things that can like, you know,
16:25
Speaker 1: shooting missiles. And it's the whole idea is that he
16:28
Speaker 1: wants to get investors, and he um rounds up rich
16:31
Speaker 1: people that are like walking around in the city that
16:33
Speaker 1: you're in to come and check out him using this
16:36
Speaker 1: wireless technology. And that was sort of a time. It
16:38
Speaker 1: was at the same time around the late eighteen hundreds
16:40
Speaker 1: or mid eighteen hundreds, and it was a time of
16:43
Speaker 1: that kind of ingenuity when people were so far ahead
16:46
Speaker 1: of like what investors were willing to put their money toward.
16:50
Speaker 1: You had to really wow them with some kind of
16:52
Speaker 1: display that they was unequivocally a thing that was going
16:56
Speaker 1: to work and that was worth their money. Yeah, and
16:59
Speaker 1: so they put some cash behind it. They gave Morse
17:03
Speaker 1: and Co. Thirty thousand dollars to build a thirty eight
17:07
Speaker 1: mile wire line from Baltimore, Maryland, to Washington, D C.
17:13
Speaker 1: And then on May one, should we inflation calculate that?
17:17
Speaker 1: Of course, whenever we can, we should. I'm gonna guess
17:21
Speaker 1: one million dollars. So let's say, just for the sake
17:26
Speaker 1: of argument, and say eighteen forties dollars. And we said,
17:30
Speaker 1: what was that? Thirty thousand? Okay, so thirty thousand dollars
17:34
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties would be equal to what did
17:38
Speaker 1: you guess? One million dollars? Dude? You really close. It's
17:41
Speaker 1: nine hundred and eighty thousand, thousand, four and eighty dollars.
17:46
Speaker 1: What do I win? Piece of mind? I'll take it, Okay,
17:51
Speaker 1: I need it, Yeah, I be. I'm sure we have
17:54
Speaker 1: a T shirt somewhere, a ridiculous history t shirt. I'm
17:57
Speaker 1: not gonna be one of those guys. In the band
17:58
Speaker 1: wearing their own shirt. That's embarrassing. I would wear a
18:02
Speaker 1: Casey on the Case shirt. Oh, I absolutely Well that's
18:04
Speaker 1: different though, that that represents the good Mr Mr Pegram,
18:08
Speaker 1: not our own. Do we talk about this on air?
18:10
Speaker 1: I pitched Casey on getting a T shirt with just
18:15
Speaker 1: his face on it. You were against that, right, yeah?
18:20
Speaker 1: I think so. I'm gonna say no to that one
18:22
Speaker 1: man Casey on the Sad Sad Case. Well, you know what, Hey,
18:28
Speaker 1: how about this, listeners? You guys speak up, let us know,
18:31
Speaker 1: demand it, Demand Casey's face on a T shirt and
18:34
Speaker 1: then we'll see if he changes his tune. Oh We're
18:38
Speaker 1: gonna be in deep trouble on that one. Huh so.
18:41
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. So they strung up the line, Yeah, probably
18:44
Speaker 1: along a similar route as there would have been a
18:47
Speaker 1: train travel. I imagine that would make sense, right, that's
18:49
Speaker 1: a good point. It really gets national attention when the
18:53
Speaker 1: device is used by the Wig Party to telegraph their
18:58
Speaker 1: presidential nomineetion from Baltiware, Maryland, to Washington, d C. Much
19:03
Speaker 1: much faster than an ordinary courier could have traveled. And
19:07
Speaker 1: people say, holy smokes, building this wires is real pain.
19:12
Speaker 1: Once you have the wire up. This is very useful. Yeah,
19:15
Speaker 1: and and it makes me think of those barbed wire
19:17
Speaker 1: telephone networks because all you need is a conductive material.
19:21
Speaker 1: There's something special about it just has to travel from
19:23
Speaker 1: point A to point B and it can transmit those messages.
19:26
Speaker 1: And it's so cool because I mean, it makes sense,
19:28
Speaker 1: but I I just wasn't thinking about it in these terms.
19:30
Speaker 1: You know, in my head, the invention of the telegraph
19:33
Speaker 1: was so far removed from the invention of the telephone.
19:36
Speaker 1: But that's how technology works when you're building on the
19:39
Speaker 1: work of others. Antonio mucci Um, who was an Italian immigrant,
19:44
Speaker 1: started developing what was referred to as the talking telegraph
19:48
Speaker 1: as early as eighteen forty nine. We see the concurrence,
19:53
Speaker 1: or the confluence rather of these similar technologies and then
19:58
Speaker 1: the speaking of your parallel thinking. The Italian gentleman I
20:01
Speaker 1: just mentioned came up with his design completely independently of
20:05
Speaker 1: Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with the invention. So
20:08
Speaker 1: it just goes to show like it's totally a thing
20:10
Speaker 1: that happens. It's first to the patent office. Sometimes that's
20:13
Speaker 1: the way it works, right. So Morse has finally achieved
20:17
Speaker 1: his mission, and almost twenty years later, years later, he
20:24
Speaker 1: has not put his tragedy to rest, but he has
20:28
Speaker 1: made something positive in the world from this terrible personal catastrophe.
20:34
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the question that we have
20:36
Speaker 1: to ask, would Morse code or with the telegraph have
20:41
Speaker 1: existed without this man on personal mission. The answer is yes,
20:46
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't be Morse code. We've been throwing around
20:53
Speaker 1: the phrase Morse code, and we said, there are dots
20:55
Speaker 1: and dashes, what exactly is Morse code? It changed a
20:59
Speaker 1: little over time, right, It did change a little bit
21:01
Speaker 1: over time, because, like we said, you know, he had
21:04
Speaker 1: this invention that he had worked with these other inventors
21:07
Speaker 1: to achieve, including Alfred Vale, who invented his contribution to
21:13
Speaker 1: the device, which was the telegraph key, which is literally
21:16
Speaker 1: that little button that we've been talking about that allows
21:18
Speaker 1: you to like enter in the code. But Morse himself
21:22
Speaker 1: was credited with coming up with a system of dots
21:26
Speaker 1: as in a short beep and then I'm along beep
21:29
Speaker 1: beep versus beep and with those it's sort of like
21:32
Speaker 1: a brail alphabet, but for your ears instead of your fingers,
21:35
Speaker 1: right right, And he created this code with some inspiration
21:39
Speaker 1: from earlier attempts to communicate even just line of sight
21:43
Speaker 1: over distance through visual cues, you know, semaphore kind of stuff.
21:47
Speaker 1: Yet a controversy exists. If you look at International Morse
21:51
Speaker 1: Code now we still call it Morse code, you'll see
21:54
Speaker 1: that that fairly easy to grock system dots and dashes
21:59
Speaker 1: or ditson oz as it's referred to in the parlance
22:02
Speaker 1: of Morris Coterie. Yes, and I like the phrase Coderie. However,
22:07
Speaker 1: many scholars will tell you that Morse code is misnamed
22:11
Speaker 1: and it should actually be called Veil code. Uh, due
22:15
Speaker 1: to the contributions of Alfred Vale, who collaborated with Samuel Morse.
22:20
Speaker 1: So many scholars will say that Veil, as a collaborator,
22:25
Speaker 1: was the generative force behind what we call Morse code. However,
22:30
Speaker 1: people who say that Morse invented it himself will point
22:34
Speaker 1: out that Veil, in public and private, never claimed he
22:37
Speaker 1: invented the code, and he credited Samuel Morse with the
22:42
Speaker 1: creation of the code in different private correspondence. So if
22:47
Speaker 1: you want to be a revolutionary academic, you can. You
22:50
Speaker 1: can argue the Veil side of it. It's just many
22:53
Speaker 1: people attribute Morse code to Samuel Morse including Alfred Vale. Yeah,
22:58
Speaker 1: and I actually have the mis conception that UM Morse
23:02
Speaker 1: code was sort of the way you would enter in
23:05
Speaker 1: letters alpha numerically, like in a telephone where you know
23:09
Speaker 1: each however many you know A is one, dot, B
23:14
Speaker 1: is two, C is three. But if you think about
23:16
Speaker 1: it in a whole sentence, if you keep things in
23:17
Speaker 1: one letter at a time like that, it would take
23:19
Speaker 1: ages to communicate any meaningful information. Right, So there's a
23:23
Speaker 1: whole another system that makes Morse code UM efficient and
23:28
Speaker 1: able to have high words per minute counts, which is
23:31
Speaker 1: how Morse code transmissions are measured. But I have to say, Ben,
23:34
Speaker 1: even after reading into this stuff, maybe I'm being a
23:36
Speaker 1: little dense here, I still don't fully get like how
23:40
Speaker 1: the code works. Because if an S is an s
23:43
Speaker 1: O S is three dits uh and O is three
23:46
Speaker 1: DAWs and asks three dits how how how does that
23:49
Speaker 1: relate to other letters? Or is it phrase based? Like?
23:52
Speaker 1: Maybe you can explain so think of it in terms
23:55
Speaker 1: of units. So a dit or dot give it as
24:00
Speaker 1: one unit almost like music, okay, and a dash is
24:05
Speaker 1: three units, so dot and then a dashes got it
24:10
Speaker 1: for lack of a better vocal que. The space between
24:14
Speaker 1: parts of the same letter would be one unit, so
24:17
Speaker 1: there's one dits space between these dits and these DAWs,
24:22
Speaker 1: And the space between separate letters is three units, so
24:26
Speaker 1: there's a three unit space between every letter that you
24:30
Speaker 1: send out. So in an S O S, you would
24:33
Speaker 1: have that dit dit and then a space for the
24:37
Speaker 1: span of three other dits. So people would say, Okay,
24:40
Speaker 1: that's stopped, that's an S and then what was that?
24:43
Speaker 1: Why On telegrams they say stop now, I'm sorry, keep going.
24:49
Speaker 1: But the the the space between words would be seven units,
24:54
Speaker 1: so they're they're counting not just the dits or the DAWs,
24:59
Speaker 1: but they're counting the absence of those and they can
25:03
Speaker 1: figure out from the spaces between letters or words what
25:07
Speaker 1: a phrase is supposed to be. I see. And also
25:10
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this chart of the alphabet and the
25:13
Speaker 1: number system one through ten or one through nine and zero.
25:17
Speaker 1: It's a little easier than you might think. A is dit,
25:19
Speaker 1: D B is dot dit C is do dit? I
25:23
Speaker 1: like saying don did it's fun D is dot E
25:27
Speaker 1: is just one dit F is dit And going back
25:31
Speaker 1: to your question, why is it not a dit for
25:33
Speaker 1: one for two for three, I feel like it beats
25:38
Speaker 1: about to drop, but one is actually did da da
25:42
Speaker 1: da da seems long for one? It does? And what
25:46
Speaker 1: we're talking about right now, this this code that we're
25:48
Speaker 1: reading back to you is what became known as International
25:52
Speaker 1: Morris Code and it was adopted by the international community
25:55
Speaker 1: because incorporated the Latin alphabet with some extra Latin letters
25:59
Speaker 1: and also Arabic numerals and some punctuation and some other
26:04
Speaker 1: symbols that were not accounted for in Morse's original code.
26:07
Speaker 1: So over time Morse's basis for Morse Code got phased
26:11
Speaker 1: out and it actually ended up not even being the
26:15
Speaker 1: original Morse code that Morris created that kind of took
26:18
Speaker 1: hold and got adopted by the international community. It was
26:21
Speaker 1: this International Morse Code that was developed by Frederick Clemens Girk,
26:25
Speaker 1: who was a German writer and journalist and also someone
26:30
Speaker 1: that was very interested in telegraphy, and he revised that
26:33
Speaker 1: Morse code to make it make more sense, include more
26:36
Speaker 1: necessary characters that could be adopted more widely. Yeah, so
26:40
Speaker 1: ten years after that first telegraph line opens in eighty four,
26:45
Speaker 1: there were over twenty three thousand miles of line or
26:49
Speaker 1: wire crossing the continent, and it hit a watershed moment
26:54
Speaker 1: as various businesses that required quick long distance communication gandy
27:00
Speaker 1: use telegraph systems. Railroad companies were one of the first
27:03
Speaker 1: to the plate there they would use it to communicate
27:06
Speaker 1: between their stations, and these telegraph companies began to pop
27:10
Speaker 1: up everywhere that you could imagine. While this was happening,
27:14
Speaker 1: countries in Europe were developing their own system of Morse code.
27:19
Speaker 1: And the code used in America was called American Morse
27:22
Speaker 1: Code or Railroad Morse, and the code used in Europe
27:26
Speaker 1: was called Continental Morse. And so that's when that's when
27:29
Speaker 1: they realized they need to standardize this stuff, as you
27:32
Speaker 1: pointed out, with something that everyone can agree on. And
27:36
Speaker 1: one of the things that brought this need for an
27:39
Speaker 1: international code to public attention was the use of radio communication,
27:46
Speaker 1: invented in the eighteen nineties, right, and radio frequencies got
27:50
Speaker 1: longer and longer and longer, it became possible to communicate internationally.
27:56
Speaker 1: And that's when they realized, Okay, if we're talking about
28:00
Speaker 1: a global level of communication, we all have to more
28:03
Speaker 1: or less be speaking the same language. And as technology
28:06
Speaker 1: tends to do, it was subsumed by the next best thing,
28:10
Speaker 1: which became the telephone or the talking telegraph, and then
28:14
Speaker 1: radio communication or wireless right because you didn't have to
28:18
Speaker 1: have the infrastructure. It was all just done on radio waves.
28:22
Speaker 1: That was adopted by the military for communicating between you know,
28:25
Speaker 1: planes and such. And even though uh like, for example,
28:29
Speaker 1: amateur radio enthusiasts still use Morse code, it's a little
28:34
Speaker 1: bit more of kind of a quirky holdover from the past.
28:36
Speaker 1: I believe, Ben, you were telling me that the that
28:39
Speaker 1: pilots UM and military personnel UM had to learn Morse
28:44
Speaker 1: code up until I think the nineties, right, Yeah, up
28:46
Speaker 1: until the nine nineties, pilots were required to know how
28:50
Speaker 1: to communicate using Morse code, and up until two thousand
28:54
Speaker 1: and seven, if you wanted to get an amateur radio license,
28:58
Speaker 1: you had to pass a Morse Code proficient agency tests.
29:01
Speaker 1: But you're right, the average person today is probably not
29:05
Speaker 1: going to communicate Morse code, and they're probably not going
29:10
Speaker 1: to know it. Most of us wouldn't know Morse code.
29:13
Speaker 1: I mean, I admitted at the beginning of the show
29:15
Speaker 1: that I promptly forgot it after getting whatever merit badge
29:19
Speaker 1: I was. I was gunning for and believe it or not,
29:22
Speaker 1: man American morse code, the railroad morse code is still around.
29:29
Speaker 1: It's nearly extinct, but it's still around. And uh, one
29:33
Speaker 1: group of people who are keeping it alive might surprise you, sure,
29:36
Speaker 1: amateur radio operators. I feel like that's that's an easy one.
29:41
Speaker 1: Civil war reenactors, Civil war reenactors keep American morse code alive.
29:47
Speaker 1: Interesting And one that I hadn't thought about is or
29:51
Speaker 1: something we haven't even discussed at all, is that you
29:53
Speaker 1: can also transmit morrise code visually through flashes of light
29:56
Speaker 1: and at sea, uh, to communicate between ships or for
30:00
Speaker 1: a ship to communicate with shore. They have these lamps
30:02
Speaker 1: that have shutters on them. They can flash codes to uh,
30:05
Speaker 1: you know, to the shore's You can actually get messages
30:08
Speaker 1: back to shore by line of sight, and military personnel
30:12
Speaker 1: POWs have used morse code through blinking to communicate the
30:18
Speaker 1: true nature their situation and prospaganda videos. It's got all
30:21
Speaker 1: kinds of uses. Still, not to mention young lads banging
30:25
Speaker 1: on tree stumps in the forest. Yes, yes, yes, it's
30:28
Speaker 1: a huge industry nowadays. And that's our story there. There
30:33
Speaker 1: is a point though that we should make and that
30:36
Speaker 1: is that the telegraph system or something like it would
30:40
Speaker 1: have developed without Samuel Morris because so many people were
30:44
Speaker 1: working on something similar. However, his personal mission, his passion
30:52
Speaker 1: to UH to save other people from the situation that
30:55
Speaker 1: he himself encountered, played a huge role in the timing
30:58
Speaker 1: of Morse code. For it to be come a thing
31:00
Speaker 1: when it did. It may have taken a little bit
31:03
Speaker 1: longer had one man not been so emotionally impersonally driven
31:08
Speaker 1: to pursue this innovation. And you know what I say, thanks,
31:13
Speaker 1: because we couldn't have had a podcast if things like
31:18
Speaker 1: Morse code and telegraphs and later radio ever existed. I mean,
31:22
Speaker 1: certainly like one of the earliest forms of long distance
31:24
Speaker 1: communication UH that served as the basis for It's just
31:28
Speaker 1: like the spark of an idea. It's like, hey, what
31:29
Speaker 1: if I could communicate an idea or a thought or
31:32
Speaker 1: a message from point A to point B. That's literally
31:35
Speaker 1: what podcasting and broadcasting a media of any kind is.
31:39
Speaker 1: It's all a jumping off from that simple idea. One
31:42
Speaker 1: day we should tell the story of Farnsworth, the inventor
31:46
Speaker 1: of television. You know, he got that idea when he
31:48
Speaker 1: was a fourteen year old farm hand. Well story for
31:52
Speaker 1: another day, and we've got to say, maybe we should
31:57
Speaker 1: go back re record this entire episode in morse own.
32:00
Speaker 1: What do you think? Yeah, I don't know about that.
32:04
Speaker 1: I'll think it over. Let us know your thoughts on
32:07
Speaker 1: Worse Code. Feel free to write to us in Worse
32:10
Speaker 1: Code if you wish. You can find us on Facebook.
32:12
Speaker 1: You can find us on almost said Amazon. I don't
32:15
Speaker 1: know if you can find us in Amazon, but we're
32:17
Speaker 1: definitely on Twitter, and you can find us collectively and
32:20
Speaker 1: individually on Instagram. I am at Ben Boland, I am
32:24
Speaker 1: at Embryonic Insider. You can check out our community page
32:27
Speaker 1: on Facebook. There Ridiculous Historians, where you can drop your
32:30
Speaker 1: history memes and hang out with your fellow podcast fans enthusiasts.
32:34
Speaker 1: And check us out next time when we explore the
32:37
Speaker 1: weird story of how a stray dog caused a war.
32:40
Speaker 1: It's true in the meantime thanks to our super producer,
32:44
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. Casey, I want to make eye contact with
32:47
Speaker 1: you and apologize for bringing up the Casey face T
32:51
Speaker 1: shirt again. But now the more I say the phrase,
32:54
Speaker 1: the more I'm feeling it. So I don't know if
32:56
Speaker 1: this puts us on opposite sides of history, but I
32:59
Speaker 1: hope we were main friends. We'll see you ends up
33:01
Speaker 1: on the right side of history thanks to Alex Williams
33:04
Speaker 1: who composed our theme, and it's always on the right
33:05
Speaker 1: side of history and the right side of our hearts,
33:07
Speaker 1: along with Gabe, our research associates, and you Ben, and
33:11
Speaker 1: to you as well, Noll and you know what to
33:13
Speaker 1: you Samuel Morris, cheerio,