Morse Code

Telegraph Key

Talking to the gang at lunch yesterday about radios. Morse Code is great for use in remote locations because you can get more range with less power. But Morse Code is kind of a pain, all those dots and dashes, but mostly because of the amount of time you have to spend to get good enough so that it becomes second nature.

It would not be too difficult to write a computer program that could turn text into Morse Code, and many programs have been written to do just that. But typing for some people is as alien as Morse Code. Well, we have pretty good speech recognition software now, my wife uses it to send text messages on her smart phone. We might have a solution. Or maybe not. Rumor has it that speech recognition is not done right in the phone. The rumor I heard is that your voice message is transmitted to a server, the server translates your message and then sends the text back to you, and then your phone sends the text message out. A cumbersome and horribly inefficient way of getting a message out, but hey, this is America, and if more power will solve the problem, then more power it is. If this is indeed the case, it is not going to work in a remote location, i.e. a location without cell phone service.

The other end (translating Morse Code to text) is another issue. Stephen C. Phillips has written a web based version. I don't know how many other people have attempted it.