I sat down at the computer not quite sure what I was going to post about, only that I wanted to write a post. Since I wasn’t sure what I was going to talk about, I decided to do a little wandering around the internet to see what I would come across. One of my most commonly accessed sites would have to be Google, and when I went there just now, I was greeted with the following:

It took me a moment when I first saw it because it looked like they were missing most of the letters. Now, it is well known that Google regularly changes the logo on their homepage to commemorate different days. Coincidentally, they offer a holiday logo archive that contains many of the logos that have been used over the years.

Anyway, the first thought I had when I saw today’s logo was “What holiday or special day would it be?” and then I looked again and a bit more closely… “Wait a minute! That’s morse code!”

I did a very limited amount of research, and discovered that today is (or would be) the 218th birthday of Samuel F.B. Morse. For those who might not know (yeah, like any of my readers would fall into that category) Samuel F.B. Morse was the inventor of the telegraph and creator of Morse Code.

While many consider Morse Code to be a dying art, it is still very useful in a wide variety of situations. It is very versatile and can be “transmitted” in a wide variety of media (flashing a light, a whistle, tapping your hand on a desk, etc) making it an excellent choice for many situations when standard voice communication is unavailable or impractical.

For easy reference, I have included one of the many Morse Code tables that can be found throughout the internet, you can click on it for a larger view:

One of the most commonly thought of things when people think of Morse Code is ham radio, but (for better or worse) there is no longer any requirment for knowing Morse Code for any ham radio license class. It is still used fairly regularly by quite a few people, but there are many ham radio operators (myself included) who do not know it.

I can pick out a few characters here and there and can recognize it when I see/hear it (even some place unexpected like the Google logo) but that is about it. I wish that I knew it better, but I just haven’t really set my mind to it and/or made it a priority to learn. Perhaps this is a sort of subtle reminder that I should do that…maybe one of these days when I get a few other projects finished first.

What about you? Do you know Morse Code? If not, do you have any desire to learn it?