41–50 of 74 posts
Sadly I never got my ham license, but it was my grandfather's obsession with radio which got me into electronics and, ultimately, software engineering. I still practice coding now and then, and morse is my go-to "hello world" for playing with new microcontrollers:
https://github.com/markshroyer/msp430-morse/blob/master/mors...
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More than a language, Morse is a script (or whatever is the generalisation of "script" to other transport layers than the written page), isn't it? The fact that you experienced learning Morse similar to learning a new language is rather surprising. For example, I would expect that you can transliterate random Morse into ASCII, perhaps at a lower bitrate, and, if so, the role of understanding the meaning of the conten…
Why I compare it to learning a new language is because after a certain speed it becomes almost impossible to read it out letter by letter. When you get good enough you start to see complete words in the light. When you learn a new language you go through a stage where you're going back word for word to your own language in your head. Eventually you become good enough to start thinking in the new language.
Yes, spoken language is technically built out of phonemes (sounds that we can distinguish, and which carry meaning) -- but there aren't "universal" phonemes (hence most Japanese's problems distinguishing between r/l -- two sounds that are almost identical, and do not carry distinct meaning in Japanese, but do in most(?) European languages).
But the "stops" that allows us to "hear" the phonemes, and even the "stops" between words -- are in fact almost non-existent. This is one reason why we often feel native speakers of a language we've yet to master, speak "too quickly". Our brains are unable to recognize the patterns (words and phrases) from the stream of sounds.
I thnik there's a storng parallel there to how we raed word-picurtes, and not wrods. (Read that line again, slowly).
It makes sense to me that to be "literate" in morse, you'd have to stop looking at the letters, and start looking for the words. Sounds like a great way to learn morse code (and there might be a lesson there about flashcards for foreign languages as well...).
I mean better in different ways - easier to learn, less error prone, shorter,..
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It was always visual. It seemed useless at the time, spending hours out in the pouring rain on a ship, sending a message with a flashing light to another ship, but they always reminded us that even with all our technology and cryptography, flashing light is still the most secure method of close ship-to-ship communications because it's directional when using focused light.
- Is he the only one looking? - Probably. - We'll have to chance that. :) still my favorite movie
In amateur radio, the characteristics of someone's CW (morse code) is called their "fist". I used to be able to do 5 WPM and one year I participated in field day (the annual ham competition to contact as many people as you can, etc) with it -- that year was magical because I used morse code for my first time to talk to someone. The feeling of dits and dahs coming across the airwaves actually being communication from…
If any of you are already fluent in Morse, I'd love to hear from you! Were you able to hear full words or phrases "natively"? Did you ever have the experience of being able to identify the person on the other end merely by accent?
First I want to answer one of your other questions -- could a skilled Morse operator identify a person by his sending style, what we called his "fist". The answer is yes, absolutely. But there's more to it than that -- each CW (continuous wave) transmitter had different characteristics, in the days when most of them were built by their operators -- some of them changed frequency slightly during each dash, some of the…
I have wanted to learn Morse ever since I read The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage [2]. I know people use keyboards nowadays---and even software to read Morse and translate it automatically into text---but I want to learn to send it by hand. Do you recommend a straight key or a bug to begin with? (I just love the look of those beautiful machines with tiny pendulums and jewelled bearings and neodymium magnet 'springs'...). I also wonder about electronic keyers with paddles. What works best for a beginner who wants to develop a good 'fist'?
[2] Standage, Tom. The Victorian Internet. New York: Walker and Company, 1998. ISBN 978-0-8027-1604-0.
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It was always visual. It seemed useless at the time, spending hours out in the pouring rain on a ship, sending a message with a flashing light to another ship, but they always reminded us that even with all our technology and cryptography, flashing light is still the most secure method of close ship-to-ship communications because it's directional when using focused light.
Ahhh, the days before a $250 quadcopter existed to provide a plausible attack vector. I wonder if Navy personnel are flashing base64 (base36?) encoded GPG encrypted Morse code messages to each other?
I tried learning in middle school and just memorizing all the letters was a pain. At that age it's just not that exciting, at least for me it wasn't. I can totally appreciate the value of it now, the ability to send messages around the world with just an antenna. My wave is bigger than yours, or something like that, LOL.
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Ahhh, the days before a $250 quadcopter existed to provide a plausible attack vector. I wonder if Navy personnel are flashing base64 (base36?) encoded GPG encrypted Morse code messages to each other?
Ship to ship laser communication fixes that :) Good luck finding the beam.