In 1837, Samuel Morse e alfred vail they developed a communication system that would change the world forever. In truth, Morse had been circling around for two years already, but the contribution of his precious assistant was decisive. Despite this, the system is known as “Morse Code”. And here's the first thing you didn't know, right? Put it at the end of the question “who invented Morse code”, because in life even the details count.
The genesis
The rod telegraph had been presented 40 years without, and did its job very well even if with some difficulty. In summary, a message processed by some rotating arms was seen with the telescope by an operator positioned at a distance, who encoded it. Secret messages, okay, but sometimes secret even for the interlocutors themselves. Could it have been done better? It was the question that the American painter, inventor and historian Samuel Morse had been posing for a while. Creativity was his gift, but not technical ability: nevertheless, despite taking three long years from 1832 to 1835, our hero managed to create a relay system that would later form the core of the invention.
Initially the mechanism, i.e. the TRUE Morse Code which was later abandoned, was cumbersome to say the least: each combination emitted by the telegraph (the relay machine that created the impulses) corresponded to a number, which Morse had linked to an entire word. An example of operation? 1-4-7-8 gave 1478, a number which, wait for it, I read the booklet, means "table". Definitely complicated to compose entire sentences, right?
Vail tied impulses to letters, and making words became much, much easier. Oh, Morse code. It was the beginning of the magic.
How Morse Code Works
The communication system was designed to send messages through a series of long and short pulses. The Morse signals. Long pulses represented dots, while short pulses represented dashes. Dots, dashes. Elementary signs, which became electrical impulse after electrical impulse the standard for communications on the whole planet, remaining at the top for over 100 years starting from the official patent (in 1840).
Why it was fundamental
Morse code was an incredible invention: the first dramatic sign of a world becoming more accessible thanks to technology. And smaller, too: before this code, people could only communicate with those close to them. At most with those who were at a distance visible with a telescope (and with the limits of the earth's curvature, you know, that old story that the Earth is not flat).
Morse's first message, “What hath God wrought?”, taken from Book of Numbers, was sent from Washington to Baltimore on May 24, 1844. The message was transmitted in Morse code (but really?) via a cable stretched between the two cities. It only took a few seconds to receive it, and that from a person's perspective at the time was crazy. It immediately became the fastest form of communication. Newspapers soon began using Morse code to send news from one city to another. By 1861, more than twenty thousand miles of telegraph lines were in use in the United States alone!
Thanks to Morse code, people could communicate with anyone in the world, as long as they had a telegraph machine. This allowed everyone to stay in touch with family and friends, no matter how far away they lived. And do we want to talk about trade and industry? Businesses could transact with customers and suppliers located all over the world.
Morse code, the legacy of courage
Morse code also played an important role in the development of other technologies. For example, it was used to develop the first communication systems wireless. These systems were used to send messages between ships at sea and between airplanes in flight: without them we would not be able to communicate with each other as easily as we do today.
The true legacy of Morse Code (even though it was practically invented by Vail, always remember this) was in the courage to overcome physical limits: a leap into the void made with words. Yet the first ones missed the mark. They asked themselves, as mentioned, “What hath God wrought?”. “What has God done?”. No. What did Men do, rather.
