Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood

by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment. The International Morse Code encodes the Roman alphabet, the Arabic numerals and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals as standardized sequences of short and long "dots" and "dashes", or "dits" and "dahs". Because many non-English natural languages use more than the 26 Roman letters, extensions to the Morse alphabet exist for those languages. Morse code speed is measured in words per minute (wpm) based upon sending a specified 'standard' word a specific number of times per minute. For code speed standards, the 'average' length of a word is generally assumed to be five characters. Code is often sent by hand in which case the timing and speed may not be perfectly consistent. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has used two different standard words for measuring code speed, each standard having five characters, namely the words "PARIS" and "CODEX". The US FCC has traditionally used the PARIS based speed standard for amateur radio operator tests and the CODEX based speed standard for commercial radio telegraph operator tests. Individual characters within a word are represented by a unique sequence of short and long duration signals according to the table accompanying this article. The short duration signals are called 'dots' while the long duration signals are called 'dashes'. The duration of a dash is three times the duration of a dot. Each dot or dash is always followed by a short duration, equal to the dot duration, during which no signal is transmitted. Thus, the time taken by the dot duration comprises the most basic unit of time measurement in code transmission. Valid Morse characters are the normal 'alphabetic letters' (26 in the case of English) plus 'numerals' (0-9), plus punctuation marks (e.g. period, comma, etc.) and certain special 'prosigns'. Since individual characters are assigned different sequences of dots and dashes the overall word duration will be different for different standard words. Thus, for a specified standard word, and nominal wpm speed, the actual speed of transmission in terms of dots per second will vary according to the actual standard word chosen to measure code speed. Dotting speeds for PARIS and CODEX are different for the same nominal wpm speeds. Since the standard word PARIS has a length of 50 dot durations, a speed of 12 wpm using PARIS is associated with a dot duration equal to 60sec/(12 x 50) = 100msec. For PARIS sent at 12 wpm, each dot is 100 ms long. Based upon PARIS sent at a nominal wpm, the corresponding dot duration may then be calculated using the simple formula; dot duration = 1.2sec/wpm. Similarly since the standard word CODEX has a length of 60 dot durations, a speed of 10 wpm using CODEX is associated with a dot duration equal to

60sec/(10x60) = 100ms. Thus for CODEX sent at 10 wpm each dot is 100 ms long. Based upon CODEX, the corresponding dot duration may be calculated using the simple formula; dot duration = 1sec/wpm. Clearly then, the 'dotting speed' in dots per second for CODEX based measurements is 20% faster than the dotting speed for PARIS based measurements. Correspondingly nominal wpm speeds based upon the CODEX word are 20% faster than the same nominal wpm speeds based upon the PARIS standard word. Efficiently encoding dots and dashes into characters to achieve a high efficiency of information transmission for a given dot duration or dotting speed, the inventors of the Morse code (Samuel F. B. Morse and his assistant Alfred Vail) actually assigned shorter sequences of dots and dashes to the more frequently used characters in English and longer sequences to the less common English characters. For example the letter 'E' is represented by a single dot, while less probable characters such as 'Q' were assigned longer sequences. The actual dot-dash sequence assignments for Morse code are shown in the chart accompanying this article. In fact the dot durations of Morse characters are roughly inversely proportional to their rate of occurrence in English text. In modern 'information theory' parlance, such an assignment of information efficient sequences to characters is termed 'source encoding' or 'data compression' and algorithms based upon mathematical techniques, such as Huffman encoding, and Lempel-Ziv encoding, were developed to perform this kind of efficient information encoding in the mid to late 20th century, approximately 100 years after Morse and Vail invented their code. Morse and Vail were pragmatic inventors and did not mathematically optimize their code sequence assignments nevertheless they came very close to perfection. Additional details on code speed and timing are provided in a subsequent section of this article A related but different code was originally created for Samuel F. B. Morse's electric telegraph in the early 1840s. In the 1890s it began to be extensively used for early radio communication before it was possible to transmit voice. In the early part of the twentieth century, most high-speed international communication used Morse code on telegraph lines, undersea cables and radio circuits. However, on-off keying, variable character lengths, the limited character set and the lack of forward error correction are inefficient and poorly suited to computer reception, so machine-to-machine communication generally uses frequency shift keying (FSK) or phase shift keying (PSK) and encodes text in the Baudot, ASCII and Unicode character sets. Morse code is most popular among amateur radio operators although it is no longer required for licensing in most countries, including the US. Pilots and air traffic controllers are usually familiar with Morse code and require a basic understanding. Aeronautical navigational aids, such as VORs and NDBs, constantly identify in Morse code. Because it can be read by humans without a decoding device, Morse is sometimes a useful alternative to synthesized speech for sending automated digital data to skilled listeners on voice channels. Many amateur radio repeaters, for example, identify with Morse even though they are used for voice communications. For emergency signals, Morse code can be sent by way of improvised sources that can be easily "keyed" on and off, making it one of the simplest and most versatile methods of telecommunication.