Morse Code There are at least two versions, the international and US National, and there are addtional codes for commonly used whole words, some of these are called Q-codes. In the discussion ,which is an introduction both linked ideas of information and efficient coding,, I have just concentratied on capital letters A,..,Z.
Here are some web sites for Samuel Morse, including some pictures of telegraph keys, that were current as of Jan 27, 1999
1837ad.htm ,
samuel.htm
,
SamMorse.html
,
MorseKey.html
,
SCmorseCirc.html
,
Western
Union
Example coding: Morse Code.
| Symbol | Morse Code | Binary Equiv |
Dec. Equiv |
Frequency1 | Rank2 | Probability |
| ----------- One Bit -------- | ||||||
| E | . | 0 | 0 | 3826 | 1 | 0.117 |
| T | - | 1 | 1 | 3169 | 2 | 0.097 |
| ----------- Two Bits -------- | ||||||
| I | .. | 00 | 0 | 2620 | 4 | 0.080 |
| A | .- | 01 | 1 | 2823 | 3 | 0.086 |
| N | -. | 10 | 2 | 2142 | 8+ | 0.066 |
| M | -- | 11 | 3 | 865 | 14+ | 0.026 |
| ----------- Three Bits -------- | ||||||
| S | ... | 000 | 0 | 2181 | 7 | 0.067 |
| U | ..- | 001 | 1 | 796 | 16 | 0.024 |
| R | .-. | 010 | 2 | 2372 | 6- | 0.073 |
| W | .-- | 011 | 3 | 311 | 21 | 0.010 |
| D | -.. | 100 | 4 | 1153 | 11 | 0.035 |
| K | -.- | 101 | 5 | 88 | 23 | 0.003 |
| G | --. | 110 | 6 | 574 | 18 | 0.018 |
| O | --- | 111 | 7 | 2590 | 5- | 0.079 |
| -----------Four Bits -------- | ||||||
| H | .... | 0000 | 0 | 1112 | 12- | 0.034 |
| V | ...- | 0001 | 1 | 339 | 20 | 0.010 |
| F | ..-. | 0010 | 2 | 814 | 15 | 0.025 |
| L | .-.. | 0100 | 4 | 1333 | 9- | 0.041 |
| P | .--. | 0110 | 6 | 939 | 13- | 0.029 |
| J | .--- | 0111 | 7 | 18 | 26 | 0.001 |
B |
-... | 1000 | 8 | 506 | 19 | 0.015 |
| X | -..- | 1001 | 9 | 71 | 24 | 0.002 |
| C | -.-. | 1010 | 10 | 1320 | 10- | 0.040 |
| Y | -.-- | 1011 | 11 | 577 | 17 | 0.018 |
| Z | --.. | 1100 | 12 | 23 | 25 | 0.001 |
| Q | --.- | 1101 | 13 | 88 | 22 | 0.003 |
1 Characters were abstracted from three articles appearing in
1998 issues of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Total characters:
32650. Expected Character Length = 2.533 bits. If code optimization is done
by reassigning characters to symbols (on the basis of the ranks) then: Minimum
ECL = 2.384; Maximum ECL 3.793.
Assuming 40 lines of 65 charaters each in a page of text or a 2600 character message Morse code length is 6586 bits, best is 6198 (6% shorter) worst 9861 (50%) longer. Computer storage is 8 bits per character or 316% longer. Which explains why fast modems use data compression.