History of Computers - Morse Code

Morse Code, invented in 1836 by Samuel F.B. Morsewas a language that was used to communicate through a telegraph machine across the world. Originally used as a way to communicate war plans, especially after its crucial debut when it enabled Lincoln and the North to win the Civil War, and updates, it also paved the road to binary

Samuel Morris

Overview

Morse code is a way of communicating through telegraph using a series of long and short symbols that when put together in a certain sequence will spell out words that are universally understood. This is very similar to binary, the way computers create and store data using a series of zeros and ones. Invented in 1836, the telegraph was one of the first ways that information could be transmitted quickly yet basically. However, this basic system of communication was used for many years to communicate not only in English but in other languages including code.

Samuel Morse came up with the idea of the telegraph and then the subsequent invention of the Morse Code during a conversation on a ship with scientists. When asked: "Is the velocity of electricity reduced by the length of its conducting wire?", another scientist replied that "electricity passes instantly over any known length of wire and referred to Franklin's experiments... in which no appreciable time elapsed between a touch at one end and a spark at the other."

Fueled by the death of his wife, Samuel worked and created the electromagnetic telegraph and then subsequently Morse code in the years that followed this conversation.

Significance

Morse code is very significant because it was the first time that there was a way to use and send information using only two types of symbols: long and short. This is almost exactly the way that computers today store information in binary. If it was not for Morse Code, there would not be a universal language of computers, and there would be no computers or the programs that we have become acquainted to, not to mention that there would be a lack of communication that would make transportation of land and sea extremely dangerous and unpredictable i.e. the Titanic.