Samuel Finley Breeze Morse born on April 27, 1791 in the family of preacher Jedid Morse in the American town of Charlestown, in Massachusetts. Until the age of 34, Morse was extremely far from technology; he was an artist. In 1826, Morse founded the National Academy of Drawing and served as its president from 1826 to 1845.

Self-portrait, 1818 Mrs. Richard Cary Morse and Family Dying Hercules
Muse. Suzanne Walker Morse Portrait of Little Miss Hawn Jupiter's Judgment

But today few people know about this part of Morse's life. He became famous for his telegraph alphabet...

This gave Morse the idea to create quick way transfer of information is a sad event. In 1825, Samuel received a letter that his wife was dying. Morse immediately set off, but did not have time; by his arrival his wife had already died. This event shocked Morse so much that he decided to create a system with which he could quickly transmit messages over long distances.

At this time, Faraday's book was published and the experiments shown in it were repeated by many. One day he saw such “tricks” with electromagnetic induction. A live wire was brought close to the compass, and its needle began to deviate. This idea gripped him. Morse sketched out a couple of drawings. He devoted the next 3 years to building his apparatus, but to no avail.

Morse would hardly have been able to realize his idea on his own. He was helped by industrialist Steve Weil, who gave $2,000 for development and allocated premises, on the condition that Morse would take his son Alfred as an assistant.

He made the first working model of a telegraph in 1835. In 1838 he developed a system of dots and dashes for coded transmission of messages. Alfred Vail had not only ingenuity, but also a keen practical sense. Over the following years, Weil was largely instrumental in developing the final form of Morse code, introducing the telegraph key instead of the connecting rod, and reducing the size of the apparatus to a compact model. He also invented the printing telegraph, which was patented in the name of Morse, according to. terms of the Weil and Morse contract.

The first telegraph message was sent on May 27, 1844, over a 64 km wire line between Washington and Baltimore, its text read: “What hath God wrought!” (Wonderful are your works, O Lord!). At that time, the version of Morse codes involved the transmission of only numbers. Further, they needed to be translated into letters and words, which was very tedious.

A fragment of the first message in Morse code transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. The marks of three steel needles on the paper are clearly visible.

How was the first Morse telegraph apparatus constructed?

A weight E, through a block of gears D, similar to that used in a clock mechanism, set the paper web in uniform motion, rewinding from roller A to roller C. The oscillating pendulum F ended with a pencil g, which could leave a mark passing over roller B. Movement of the pendulum F along the paper was caused by an electromagnet h when current was supplied to it from battery I. Depending on the duration of contact between the pencil and paper, zig-zags were drawn. From the number of designs of these zig-zags, Morse made the alphabet.

From 1832 to 1835 Morse used a mechanical manipulator. He cut blocks from wood that had protruding teeth, then assembled the necessary sequences of signs from them, fixing them on a wooden ruler M, which moved horizontally from the rotation of the rollers L. When the protruding teeth raised the lever O, its other end was lowered and the wire jumper was lowered into the container K and J filled with mercury, the circuit was closed and current was supplied to the electromagnet. Morse later replaced the mechanical manipulator with a lever one.

Blocks encoding characters in the first version of the device and the trace left on paper on tape

In 1835 the apparatus was made exactly as described above, and was presented at several public experiments in 1835-1836. In 1837, Morse radically modified the receiver to become magnetoelectric and demonstrated it at New York University. These experiments made a big splash in the United States, and that is why it is erroneously believed that he invented the telegraph in 1837, although in fact the invention occurred in the fall of 1835.

A supply of paper tape was wound onto cylinder D, the end of the tape was passed through pulley G. The weight of load B, through a clock mechanism C, set in motion pulley G, which ensured uniform pulling of the paper. The electromagnet moved a lever, at the end of which a pencil was attached, thus forming a series of lines - dots and dashes.

In the first models of the telegraph, Morse used a pencil. But since it was constantly necessary to sharpen its lead, it was subsequently replaced by a pen, into which ink was constantly supplied from the reservoir. The pen gave good results, but the “handwriting” was worse. In addition, the ink dried out if the device for a long time did not work, and the telegraph could be inoperative at a crucial moment. These difficulties forced the inventor to look for new solutions... He settled on using a lever with three steel needles, which left a lasting mark on the paper, but did not pierce it. It looked like Braille for the blind. This method of paper embossing was used until 1860, until French engineers improved the Morse telegraph to allow for trouble-free writing with ink.

The world's first electromagnetic telegraph was invented by Russian scientist Pavel Lvovich Schilling.

In 1828, Schilling tested the design of a one-pointer telegraph, and in 1829, a six-pointer one. A year later, he, together with his mechanic I.A. Shveikin, laid the first electromagnetic telegraph line in Russia, more than 5 miles long, on the territory of the Main Admiralty in St. Petersburg.

The receiving device was a signal apparatus consisting of six multipliers with magnetic needles suspended on vertical silk threads. The arrows had dampers in the form of plates immersed in a vessel with mercury. The receiving device contained another calling multiplier of a similar device. Above each arrow, a light circle was attached to the thread, painted white on one side and black on the other. One end of each multiplier coil was connected to the corresponding wire of the telegraph line, and the other ends, connected together, were connected to the common one. Thus, the telegraph line consisted of eight wires (six wires to the multipliers, one to the calling multiplier and one common).

Electromagnetic six-pointer telegraph by P. L. Schilling

The transmitting device had a keyboard consisting of eight pairs of black and white keys. Six pairs of main signal keys connected the galvanic battery to the signal wires of the multipliers. The last pair of keys was connected to the calling multiplier. When one or more main keys were pressed, for example, black ones, the corresponding circles on the receiving apparatus turned their black side towards the observer. Pressing the white keys turned the circles with the white side facing the observer. In the resting position, the circles were edge-facing to the observer. When pressing the keys of the ringing animator, the movement of its arrow turned on the bell.

For his six-pointer telegraph, Schilling developed a simple code of the Russian alphabet, which even from a modern point of view can be considered convenient, concise and reliable. To transmit each letter of the alphabet, it was necessary to press one or two main keys of the transmitting apparatus. Digits were transmitted over the line using three main signals. The device required a communication line of eight insulated wires, the construction of which was quite a difficult task for that time.

Morse code

Morse code is a code in which any character is represented by a certain combination of short (dot) and long (dash) messages. The unit of duration is the time of point transmission. The transmission time of a dash is 3 units, the pause between the transmission of elements of the same character is 1 unit, the pause time between characters is 3 units, the pause between words is 7 units.

The original Morse code table was significantly different from the codes that are commonly used today.

• Initially, sendings of four durations were used: dot, dash, double dash (letter L), triple dash (number 0)
• Some symbols had pauses within their codes. So the Latin letter C was rendered as “two dots-pause-dot”, i.e. like the letters I and E passed one after another
• The encodings of the modern and original tables coincide only for half of the letters (A, B, D, E, G, H, I, K, M, N, S, T, U, V and W) and do not match for any digits

Various options soon appeared telegraph alphabet, which did not contain codes with pauses between sendings (Phillips, Balna, “sea”, “continental”...). Alfred Weil made a great contribution to the development of Morse code. And in 1848, the Weyl/Morse code was improved by the German Friedrich Gehrke (only two types of premises were left - “dots” and “dashes”, codes for German letters were introduced, codes were changed letters F,J,L,O,Q,R,X,Y,Z). The modern version of the international “Morse code” was approved in 1939, when the last adjustment was made, affecting letters O,P,X,Y,Z, all numbers, as well as punctuation marks.

The currently valid Morse code is described in the official ITU Recommendation M.1677-1 (10/2009) “International Morse Code”; we recommend that you read the original source.

Thus modern Morse codes are:

1. Uneven - letters often used in English language, are encoded with fewer dots and dashes, which helps reduce message transmission time
2. Unambiguous (bijective) - any sequence of Morse codes is decoded in exactly one way after decoding the symbols and vice versa.
3. Prefix - any Morse code sequence decodes the initial character of the sequence with exactly one decoded character in exactly one way.
4. Expandable - supplemented with new symbols, so in 2004 the International Telecommunication Union introduced new code“dot-dash-dash-dot-dash-dot” for the @ symbol used in an email address.

We bring to your attention an online Morse code translator.

What does it mean? Let's assume that you need to translate or listen to how your text will sound when translated into Morse code. You enter your text in the left window, indicate the text language below and click the right arrow. In the right window you will receive the Morse code of your text. By clicking on the "play" button below, you can listen to your text in Morse code. This way you will use our online Morse code translator.

Online text translator
to Morse code and back

In the text interpretation of the code, a “section sign” (-···-) is used to indicate a space. This is done solely for ease of copying.

Attention! The built-in player works well in Chrome, normally in Opera (if it gets stuck, you can re-encode the text into Morse code, it helps), very mediocre in Safari. In Firefox and Internet Explorer doesn't work at all .

In the audio version of the message, all the rules are followed: the duration of one point is taken as a unit of time; the duration of a dash is equal to three dots; the pause between elements of the same character is one dot, between characters in a word - 3 dots, between words - 7 dots.

The sound file for downloading is presented in the formatWAV (you need to download it, not open it in the browser). It's big: for example, Morse code for sending"Greek rode across the river. sees a Greek, a cancer in the river. stuck the Greek’s hand into the river, and the crayfish grabbed the Greek’s hand.” weighs in it 209 KB(although it contains only835 bit information).

Want to test your strength? Nothing could be simpler.

Morse code tunes:

Cyrillic	Latin	Morse code	Chant
A	A	. —	oh yeah
B	IN	— . . .	ba-ki-te-kut
IN	W	. — —	vi-da-la
G	G	— — .	ga-ra-zhi
D	D	— . .	do-mi-ki
E	E	.	There is
AND	V	. . . —	zhe-le-zi-sto
Z	Z	— — . .	for-ka-ti-ki
AND	I	. .	i-di
Y	J	. — — —	and short
TO	TO	— . —	How are you
L	L	. — . .	lu-na-ti-ki
M	M	— —	Mother
N	N	— .	number
ABOUT	ABOUT	— — —	near
P	P	. — — .	pi-la-po-yot
R	R	. — .	re-sha-et
WITH	S	. . .	si-ne-e
T	T	—	So
U	U	. . —	u-carried
F	F	. . — .	fi-li-mon-chick
X	N	. . . .	hee-mi-chi-te
C	WITH	— . — .	tsap-li-na-shi
H	No	— — — .	cha-sha-to-no
Sh	No	— — — —	sha-ro-va-ra
SCH	Q	— — . —	sha-you-don't-sha
b, b	X	— . . —	that-soft-sign
Y	Y	— . — —	s-not-to-do
E	No	. . — . .	e-le-ron-chi-ki
YU	No	. . — —	Juliana
I	No	. — . —	I'm small I'm small

And here are the tunes of numbers and the most frequently occurring characters. I note that in purely digital texts, zero is often conveyed with one dash, like the letter T - this pleasantly diversifies the transmission and eliminates the need to listen to five dashes in a row;)

Sign	Morse code	Chant
0	— — — — —	zero-to-o-ko-lo
1	. — — — —	and-only-one
2	. . — — —	I-went-to-the-mountain
3	. . . — —	three-you-be-ma-lo, or I-ku-ka-ra-cha
4	. . . . —	che-ve-ri-te-ka
5	. . . . .	five-le-ti-e
6	— . . . .	po-six-ti-be-ri
7	— — . . .	yes-yes-se-me-rik
8	— — — . .	eight-mo-go-i-di
9	— — — — .	but-na-no-na-mi
?	. . — — . .	where should I ask
!	— — . . — —	by-ka-no-pri-ka-za
,	. — . — . —	and-so-and-so-and-so
\ (delimiter)	— . . . —	once-de-li-te-ka

Comments (18):

#1 Svyatoslav March 17 2013

I've been wanting to learn Morse code for a long time

There is no Cyrillic alphabet and the Word file cannot be seen.

#3 Mstislav June 10 2017

How to start this generator sound code Morse?

#4 root June 10 2017

The program understands the Cyrillic alphabet and reproduces it in Morse code, this can be checked by entering the Russian letter “X” (Ha) into the text window, the program will reproduce a signal indicating four dots.

The program uses a simple text format for downloading and uploading. MS Word and other documents containing markup and various service information are not supported.

In order for the program to reproduce text from an MS Word document, the document file must first be saved as text file, after which it can be loaded into the Morse Code Trainer program.

To start working with the program, you need to download the archive, unpack it and run the file "Morse.exe".

#5 Guzelia August 02 2017

The program starts with three Fs, is it possible to remove this function while the learning process is underway?

#6 Alexander Compromister August 03 2017

Vik, the text can also be saved in the .txt format of the Notepad program, probably. From the Notepad program, text can already be pasted into Word.

#7 Anatoly January 23 2018

the stupid program starts singing with wow wow, I'm not smart enough to write a normal program

#8 Andrey April 10 2018

This is not a stupid program. Three w and a space before the text is a mandatory rule. It says that the text will now appear. Professionals know this. So get used to working by the rules.

#9 Andrey April 10 2018

You should start learning with a few letters at low speed. For example V,L,Y,D; then A, P, R, O. In the text field of the program, you need to write the text yourself from these first letters, dividing it strictly into groups of 5 characters (about 20-30 groups). As you master, you will add letters and write texts with a predominance of these new letters, which will allow you to consolidate your skills in accepting new letters. As you practice, you will notice that you write text easier and easier. Slowly increase your transmission speed. You have to kind of reach for the speed. Yes, one more thing, you will train the ability to write text with a lag of several characters. That is, for example, the fifth letter already sounds, and you are just starting to write down the first, and the rest are in your head. Such a lag will occur when the reception speed exceeds 25-30 groups per minute. At lower speeds there is less lag. All this will happen automatically. The text is considered accepted if it contains no more than 2 errors. Reception of 12 groups per minute - C grade, 16 - good, 18 - excellent. 30-35 - master of sports. But that's another song

#10 Andrey April 10 2018

Who else doesn't understand? You accept letters by chanting, and do not count how many dots and how many dashes are sounded. For example, the letter a is sung as “ay-daaa”, b - “baaa-ki-te-kut”, number 9 - “paaa-paaa-maaa-muuu-tuk”, and so on. All the tunes are on the Internet

#11 Vadim September 10 2018

Great program, thank you very much!

#12 Sailor October 25 2018

Class! I’ve soon completed 30 years of service, and at the end of my service I was able to transport 34 groups easily! 3 years of round-the-clock training!
I tried it, my hands and ears remember it. 24 group song!)))

#13 Alexander Compromister October 26 2018

Now, if when entering text document Morse code was broadcast, as with J2B, it would have been better.

#14 Vladimir January 09 2019

Tried to copy a text file via clipboard ( right click) but a portrait of the author appears. Is it possible to copy files into a recording field?

#15 root January 09 2019

Hello, Vladimir! Copy the desired text to the clipboard, click the mouse in the window for entering text in the Morse code trainer program and press the key combination CTRL + V (pasting content from the clipboard to the location where the cursor is currently located).

#16 Seawar January 09 2019

Glad to the cobs - don’t bother with the Cyrillic alphabet, start straight away with the Latin alphabet.

#17 Sergey June 25 2019

Great program!

#18 Alexander Compromister June 26 2019

I downloaded the Morse_Trainer program itself. Can it be used as an automatic key?

Morse code before the First World War was called "Morse". It is a special way of encoding alphabetic letters, punctuation marks, numbers and other characters arranged in a specific sequence. Long signals indicate dashes, short signals indicate dots. Conventionally, the duration of the sound of one point is taken as a time unit. The longitude of a dash is equal to three dots. A pause between characters of one character is one dot, three dots are a pause between characters in a word, 7 dots symbolize the gap between words. In post-Soviet countries, specialists use Morse code in Russian.

Who invented the codes?

Two engineers - A. Weil and D. Henry - spoke about a European development - a remote copper coil that is capable of transmitting the generated electrical impulses. Morse asked them to develop this idea, and in 1837 the first telegraph apparatus was born. The device could receive and transmit messages. Weil later proposed an encryption system using dashes and dots. Thus, Morse was not directly involved in the creation of the alphabet and the telegraph.

According to the official version, Samuel Morse was fascinated by the miracle of that time, namely, obtaining a spark from magnets. Unraveling the phenomenon, he suggested that with the help of such sparks, encrypted messages could be transmitted through wires. Morse became very interested in this idea, although he did not have the slightest idea about the basic principles of electricity. During the voyage, Samuel developed several ideas and sketched out some drawings of his idea. For another three years, in his brother’s attic, he unsuccessfully tried to build a device that could transmit signals. With all his problems in understanding electricity, he simply had no time to study it, because his wife suddenly died, and he was left with three small children.

Telegraph

Until the mid-19th century, information exchange between long distances occurred exclusively through mail. People could only learn news about events and incidents weeks or months later. The appearance of the device gave impetus to the victory over distance and time. The work of the telegraph has proven in practice that messages can be transmitted using electric current.

The first properly working telegraphs were made in 1837. Two versions of the device appeared at the same time. The first was produced by the Englishman W. Cook. The device distinguished received signals by oscillations of the needle. It was very difficult: the telegraph operator had to be extremely careful. The second version of the telegraph, the author of which was S. Morse, turned out to be simpler and gained popularity in the future. It was a self-recording device with a movable ribbon of paper. On one side, the electrical circuit was closed with a special device - a telegraph key, and on the other side - with a receiving circuit; the accepted symbols were drawn in pencil.

Since 1838, the first telegraph line, the length of which was 20 km, began to operate. Several decades later, transmission lines in England alone reached a length of 25,000 km 2. Already in 1866, a telegraph line connected the continents of the globe: the cable was laid along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Encrypted messages

Morse code became an integral part of the telegraph's operation. The cipher got its name from the name of its creator. The letters here are combinations of long and short signals. All codes are made up of the simplest code elements. The code base is the number of values ​​that an elementary message acquires during transmission. Thus, codes are divided into binary (binary), ternary and uniform (5-element, 6-element, etc.).

Morse code is an uneven telegraph code where characters are marked by combinations of sending currents of varying durations. This method became the first digital transmission of information. Initially, radiotelegraphs used this alphabet, but later Bordeaux and ASCII codes began to be used, since they are more automated. Russian Morse code is similar to Latin letters, over the years this correspondence passed into MTK-2, later into KOI-7, then into KOI-8. There are only minor differences: the letter Q is “sch”, and KOI and MTK are “I”.

Advantages of the ABC

1. High immunity to interference during listening reception.
2. Possibility of manual coding.
3. The ability to record and play back signals using the simplest devices.

Disadvantages of the ABC

1. Very low speed.
2. Uneconomical: to transmit one sign, on average you need to make about 10 elementary messages.
3. The machine is not suitable for printing letters.

Education

To decipher messages, Morse code is not always memorized; learning involves memorizing mnemonic verbal forms, or, as they are also called, chants. Each sign in the alphabet corresponds to a specific tune. In turn, these verbal forms may differ from each other. Depending on the school or country of use, some signs may be modified or simplified. Morse code in Russian is also different. Syllables of chants containing the vowels “a”, “o” and “s” are indicated by one dash, the rest - by a dot.

SOS

At sea, the method of transmitting encrypted messages came later. In 1865, the principle of the alphabet was taken as a basis in the semaphore alphabet. During the day, people communicated what they needed using flags, and at night, by flashing a flashlight. After the invention of radio in 1905, some alphabet codes began to be heard on the airwaves.

Soon people came up with the well-known SOS rescue signal. Although initially it was not a distress signal. The first signal, proposed in 1904, consisted of 2 letters CQ and stood for “come quickly.” Later they added the letter D, and it became “come quickly, danger.” And only in 1908 such a signal was replaced by the SOS that has survived to this day. The translated message was not “save our souls,” as is commonly believed, and not “save our ship.” This signal has no decoding. The International Radiotelephone Convention chose these letters as the simplest and easiest to remember: “… --- …”.

Today Morse code is used mainly by radio amateurs. It was almost completely replaced by direct-printing telegraph machines. Echoes of application can be found in the most remote corners of the globe, for example at the North Pole or far in the depths of the ocean. exists on the Internet special program“Morse code”, with which you can convert information into encrypted form.

This article will be of interest to radio amateurs who are interested in Morse code. The article talks about the “Morse code sensor” device on the ATtiny13A microcontroller, the main difference from similar devices is application of standard computer keyboard PS /2. The author provided all the necessary documentation to replicate the device, including source programs and printed circuit board.

Currently, there are a lot of applications for computers and gadgets based on Windows and Android OS, designed for learning Morse code, and circuits on microcontrollers are also presented on the Internet and literature, for example:.

There is nothing easier than to use ready-made solution, but “the customer is always right.” So: this Morse code sensor was developed at the request and technical specifications of R1ZBJ, a radio amateur from the Murmansk region.

Primary requirements:

Nutrition from network adapter voltage from +9 to +12 volts

Using a standard PS/2 computer keyboard

The microcontroller used is ATtiny13A

Connecting a speaker or earphone for monitoring

Changing the transmission speed with control “by ear”

Availability of LED indication of power and manipulation

Low current relay for CW keying

Russian keyboard layout.

The diagram of the developed Morse code sensor is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig.1 Electrical circuit diagram

The basis of the device is microcontroller IC2 from Atmel ATtiny13A. The microcontroller is clocked from an internal oscillator with a frequency of 9.6 MHz. Power from the network adapter with a voltage of +9...+12 volts is supplied to connector X1. Diode D1 is designed to protect the circuit from reverse polarity of the supply voltage. Element IC1 contains a 5 volt supply voltage stabilizer. A two-color LED HL1 is used to indicate the presence of supply voltage and indicate CW manipulation. Green is power, red is CW keying. The elements R3, R4, C5, C6 have a simple low-pass filter with a cutoff frequency of ~ 1500 Hz. The low-frequency amplifier is made on the IC3 MC34119D chip and does not have any special features.

Connector X2 is designed to connect a standard computer PS/2 keyboard.

Connector X3 is intended for in-circuit programming of the microcontroller and the numbering of its pins corresponds to the pin numbering of the PICkit2 programmer.

Connector X4 is used to connect a variable resistor and adjust the volume.

The manipulated device is connected to pins 1, 2 of connector X5, and a speaker or headphones for self-monitoring is connected to pins 3,4.

To adjust the manipulation speed, use the F1 and F2 keys. When you press F1 ( increase ) or F2 (decrease ) the transmission speed changes, its value is stored in the EEPROM of the microcontroller and the sign “F” sounds, and the manipulation external device Relay K1 contacts are missing.

The space key corresponds to the Morse code “section sign”, and the Enter key corresponds to “End connection”. When you briefly press the keyboard keys, Morse code characters will sound, and when you press them for a long time, the character will auto-repeat. You can familiarize yourself with Morse code.

The device is assembled on a double-sided printed circuit board measuring 47x57 mm. Photos of the assembled device are shown in Fig. 2-5.

Fig.2 Top view

Fig.3 Bottom view

Fig.4 Rear view

Fig.5 Front view

The controller program is written in assembly language in the AVR Studio v.4.18 programming environment.

Scheme, drawings printed circuit board in the Eagle program format, photographs of the finished device, printed circuit board drawings for the LUT, as well as program sources with comments and firmware can be downloaded from below

You can ask questions at...