International Morse Code

Named after it's American inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872), the Morse Code is a system of communication comprising of dots and dashes, the dot being a signal of short duration, the dash three times this length.  It was first used for sending messages by electric telegraph in 1837.

Morse made a study of letters that were most used.  He found that E headed the list, with T in second place and A, O, I, S and N in joint third place.  In Morse code, these are the least complicated letters in the system.  S.O.S. (.../---/...) (Save Our Souls) is an internationally recognised distress signal that can be tapped out with any handy object of flashed by torchlight.

If the duration of a dot is taken to be equal to that of one unit then that of a dash is three units.  The space in between the components of one character is one unit, between characters is three units and between words seven units. To indicate that a mistake has been made and for the receiver to delete the last word send ........ (eight dots). 

Morse Code isn't as widely used today as it was a number of years ago, but it is still a handy system to at least have a little knowledge of.