We are going to be participating in JOTA/JOTI 2000 on the weekend of October 21/22. We will have Radio equipment
and computer equipment online from Saturday evening (Australian Central Standard Time) to Sunday afternoon.
If you are in our Region and you would like to join in our activities, please phone our leaders so that we can book you into a time slot.
If you are elsewhere in the world and would like to talk to us over the weekend either by radio or by computer, please email us by clicking on the icon below or send an ICQ message to our Guide leader at "PossumTwo" 28792241.
Morse Code:
Published on February 2, 1999
By Steve Wiegand SCRIPPS-MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE
SACRAMENTO -- Sometime Monday 8th February 1999, somewhere in the world, a sentinel on some far- flung coast will tap out a series of dots and dashes on a wireless telegraph key -- and an institution will "SOS."
In this case, that stands for "Sink Out of Sight."
After a century of serving as the communications lifeline for
thousands of ships and millions of sailors and passengers, the
use of Morse code as the standard means of sending a distress
call will officially end.
As of today, passenger and cargo ships around the world will
rely on a high-tech, satellite-linked communications system
called the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS).
"It's kind of sad," said Cliff Simonsen, a U.S. Coast Guard
chief warrant officer at the Communications Area Master Station,
Pacific (CAMSPAC) at Point Reyes. Simonsen still keeps a
telegraph key, or "bug," on his desk and tapped out a few
mournful words during a recent telephone conversation.
"For those of us who have been at it a long time -- I've been
doing it 30 years -- it's a little sad to see the end of it."
More than the end of a seagoing safety system, it also marks
the demise of the last significant use of the world's first
information superhighway -- and serves as a sic transit gloria
warning for apostles of the Internet.
"It shows that everything gets out of date," Simonsen said.
"The GMDSS is not only more effective, it takes fewer people,
which means less money, which keeps Congress happy when they get
the bills. So it's good for the taxpayer too."
The GMDSS system was established in 1988 by the International
Marine Organization, a United Nations agency that oversees
international shipping safety, and it was required to be on all
passenger ships and cargo ships over 300 tons and all commercial
ships that travel in international waters by today.
Under the new system, someone on a ship in distress can push a
specific button for a specific problem -- sinking, capsizing,
dead in the water. The continuous signal is automatically relayed
and sets off alarms at listening posts and other ships in the
region. The signal also gives the vessel's international
identification number and the exact position of the ship.
Unlike the Morse system, which required a trained telegrapher
to send the SOS, anyone on the ship can activate the GMDSS
distress call. The sender also need not stick around to keep
operating the call, but can abandon ship or get to a safer area.
According to an IMO document, "it will mean that a ship in
distress anywhere in the world can be virtually guaranteed
assistance, even if the crew does not have time to radio specific
details."
Most countries have already made the switch, perhaps none
quite so poetically as the French. "Calling all," a French signal
operator at Brittany tapped out two years ago, as he or she
signed off. "This is our last cry before our eternal silence."
The first time the code was heard in public was on May 24,
1844, when inventor Samuel F.B. Morse demonstrated his invention
to members of Congress by tapping out "What hath God wrought?" on
a line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore.
It was the beginning of a worldwide communications revolution.
The telegraph radically changed national and international
business, the ways wars were fought and the way news was gathered
and disseminated.
By 1872, the globe was wound by more than 650,000 miles of
overland telegraph wire and 30,000 miles of submarine cable. Top
telegraphers could send and receive messages at 45 words per
minute, and an estimated 20,000 communities were "wired to the
world."
With the invention of the wireless radio telegraph in the
1890s, the reach extended to ships at sea. The first rescue at
sea as a result of a wireless distress call came in 1899 off the
coast of England, and the use of maritime wireless spread
rapidly.
But there was a flaw in the system, which was dramatically
demonstrated on April 14, 1912. A huge English passenger liner,
called the Titanic, hit an iceberg. The ship's telegrapher
broadcast a cry for help. But on the Californian, a ship only a
few miles away, the radio operator had gone off duty and never
heard the Titanic's messages. More than 1,500 people died.
Shaken by the disaster, an international conference decided
three months later that at least some ships should be required to
have 24-hour radio watches, and adopted "SOS" as the
international distress call.
(By the way, the International Maritime Organization says SOS
never stood for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" or anything
else. It was just decided that "...---..." (you know,
dit-dit-dit, dah-dah- dah, dit-dit-dit) was easy to remember.
As time sailed on, the telegraph faded in importance. Western
Union, for example, quit using Morse code in the 1960s. By 1981,
radiotelephones were mandatory for commercial ships. And now, a
network of four satellites will be used to bounce pinpoint
signals between ships and land-based stations.
Which is not to say Morse code will be forever silenced. U.S.
Navy ships, for example, continue to use it for ship-to-ship
signal light communications. And then there are the estimated
670,000 ham radio operators in the United States.
Still, as a widespread and practical means of communication,
it's all but over for Morse code.
(Steve Wiegand is a reporter for the Sacramento Bee in California.)
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