One of my favorite stories about Morse Code: Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone) [0] went deaf later in life. He would go to meetings with his assistant and when some asked Bell a question, he would pause, say let me think about that, pause again, and then give a response What was actually happening was that his assistant was using Morse Code + Phillips Code [1] to tap out the question on Bell's leg und…
Speaking of Victorian... I was in a fire department museum in Boston this past weekend and learned that the fire boxes around the city with the levers that one would pull in case of fire would communicate their location to one of the city's central fire control rooms via a spring wound Morse code transmitter inside the box. When the firemen arrived they'd also communicate with the control rooms with a Morse code keyer and audio device inside the fire box. So firemen, or at least some of them on each brigade, had to know Morse code to get the job.