Modern warfare is filled with cutting-edge technology, from artificial intelligence to drones and hypersonic missiles, but one technology more than a century old is still proving its worth: Morse code.
Staccato tone flows instantly recognizable to a railroad worker from more than 150 years ago are still used by the Russian military in the Ukrainian war.
Even today, many people can identify the characteristic sound of Morse code, especially the widely known three-short, three-long, three-short (… – – – …) pattern that makes up the emergency signal SOS.
Today, Morse code messages are sent from Russian bombers to their control centers or from the ships of the Baltic Fleet to their shore headquarters.
The shortwave bands used by amateur radio enthusiasts are similarly littered with beeps, known to enthusiasts as “dits” (.) and “dahs” (-) or to the wider public as dots and dashes. Even spies still listen to shortwave bands to listen to secret stations broadcasting Morse code.
Invented in the 1800s
So why is a technology created in the first half of the 1800s still used today?
First, Morse code was not designed by an engineer or tech wizard, but by a man who painted portraits for a living. Samuel Morse originally designed what we would today call a teleprinter, a device that takes text and prints it on paper.
To work out the details, Morse enlisted the help of Alfred Vail, a machinist more inclined to mechanical matters. It was the latter who created the dots and lines to represent code and came up with the idea of using sound to convey information.
Originally the audio was intended to be used only to test a connection. Soon Morse and Vail realized that the concept of oppression was impractical. But by adding sound, they stumbled upon a concept that was brighter and more useful than they could have imagined.
The remarkable feature of Morse code is that it creates a rhythm in the form of sound. Thus, it finds common ground with music. In fact, it has been noted that people with musical talent can start learning the Morse language faster.
By stimulating humans’ innate sense of rhythm, Morse code also activates our sense of pattern recognition. This is a skill deeply ingrained in our brains and has great potential for deciphering messages, even if they are incomplete.
An experienced Morse code operator can fill in any gaps caused by interference, poor reception, noise or equipment failure. In neurological terms, Morse lives in a very strange space that has been likened to “reading with the ears”, but whose transmission and reception are more like the act of speaking than writing.
Another remarkable aspect of Morse code is its technological simplicity. Anyone with basic technological skills can build their own transmitter using standard components.
The signal produced by a morse transmitter is similarly minimalist, using an extremely narrow bandwidth of only 100-150 hertz (standard voice communication uses 2,500-3,000 hertz). This also means that receivers can use very narrow filters, thus eliminating much of the ambient noise caused by various types of interference.
Because it is so effective, the walrus needs only minimal power to travel significant distances. Amateur radio enthusiasts demonstrated in 1956 that as little as 78 milliwatts of power could be sufficient to transmit from Massachusetts to Denmark. This is less than a tenth of what a single LED bulb uses. A standard coffee maker that brews most people’s favorite morning cup of coffee uses more than a thousand times the power.
This combination of technological simplicity and efficiency came in handy during World War II, when resistance members and Allied commandos used portable Morse transceivers to maintain communications with London from deep within German-occupied territory.
This was a very risky venture, as the Germans were constantly listening to the airwaves. Although Morse code is unintelligible to the untrained ear, it does not provide any security by itself.
Nowadays, even uneducated people can use software to decipher the content of a message sent using Morse code. However, as suggested by Vail in 1845, any message could be made secure by encrypting it before being sent.
In fact, one of the most secure forms of encryption, a disposable pad, requires nothing more than pen and paper. Essentially, a single-use block is a random string of characters, at least as long as the message to be encrypted.
The sender uses his own pad to encrypt, while the receiver uses a copy of the same pad to decode the message (there should be only two copies, and each should be destroyed immediately after use). As long as a pad is never reused, it remains theoretically unbreakable even with the most modern technology (although truly random strings of characters are difficult to generate).
While more efficient modes of digital communication are available today, nothing rivals the unique combination of simplicity and efficiency that has allowed morse code to survive for more than 150 years.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Tony Ingesson does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic duties.