Comments on: How Samuel Morse Got His Big Idea

By: Mike Terry

Mike Terry — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:12:23 +0000

Fascinating reading thank you. Morse was a man of man of multifarious talents, and sayings such as “If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.”

By: AB5XZ

AB5XZ — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:42:32 +0000

Reading Morse’s patent, I see that he envisioned a device that would interpret the pulses and print text. The earliest Morse machines (called registers) would just record the pulses, and the operator was responsible for interpreting the squiggles on the paper. In short order, the operators found that they could interpret the clicks and translate them directly into text. I enjoy using Morse code, but I’m not so good at it.

By: VE3OIJ

VE3OIJ — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 14:06:03 +0000

It is interesting to read this in light of how many amateur radio operators there are that poo-poo the bigger, stronger, faster modes of communication.

The most common misconception about Morse Code is that it is intended as an audio, hand-copied method of communication when it was intended by Morse himself to be a machine copied more-or-less digital method of communication. Those operators will look down upon people copying code by computer, but I think Sam Morse would smile at such a method of using telegraphy. It is, after all, teleGRAPHY, not telephony.

Great article, thank you!

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:47:36 +0000

Great piece of history.