While I believe only the U.S. Navy currently uses Morse Code, during World War II its use was ubiquitous. During my intermittent attempts to learn code, I butt against my inability to differentiate one letter/numeral from another.


How are individual letter/numerals differentiated, particularly during high-speed transmission (via bug??) to read and write words and numbers (above single digits)? For me, everything just runs together, kind've like reading German.

When I was in the Boy Scouts back in the dark ages, in Hampton, Va. all our scoutmasters were retired WW2 Navy. They required us to take the Morse Code + Semaphore merit badges. Also to be proficient in knotwork. It was a great education. I can't remember now about Morse + very little about semaphore as I never use it but the knotwork I do as it is used on an almost daily basis.

"kind've like reading German. "

Genau!!! Ich verstehe ganz!!


Long decades ago, I was formally taught to copy
Morse Code. We used manual typewriters, and listened to Morse via headsets. In the very early stages, there was a display in front of us that would show us the correct letter corresponding to the character we heard. This helped us memorize the Morse Code alphabet quickly. We memorized the characters verbally -- for example, ".- is Alpha," "-... is Bravo,", etc.

When verbalizing the characters, we did not say "dot dash", but rather "dit dah" for dot dash.
This was run together for speed's sake. Thus,
"Dit dah" because "Didah", and "Dah dit dit dit" became "Dahdididit."

Needless to say, we started slowly, but at 6 hours per day, worked our way up to 16 or 18 "groups" per minute, (GPM) minimum. (A group is 5 characters with a pause between groups to seperate them.)

Obviously, the faster you go, the shorter the spaces between characters get, and also the spaces between groups become shorter. By starting slowly and progressing at your natural rate, you learn to discriminate the spaces between characters and groups faster and faster as your skills progress.

The typewriter takes away the time it would take to try to write down each character with a pencil, greatly increasing your speed. If you DO decide to copy with a pencil, learn to write the most efficient versions of each letter possible, so that time is not wasted on extra flourishes. For example, eliminate the cross-bar on the lower-case letter "F", etc.

While you CAN copy code with a pencil, the typewriter actually makes striking the right key a conditioned response to the stimulus of hearing a given character. There's little conscious thought required when using the typewriter, and some operators can, through superior concentration, copy code blindingly fast.

The characters are differentiated by the gaps between each one. When starting slowly, the gaps are longer, and the gaps between groups are about double the length (from memory) of the gaps between characters. That way, you can keep your place while copying and organize the characters correctly into groups as they are sent.

What we were copying were random characters that did not spell actual words. This removed any temptation to be distracted by reading what you are copying. I suppose someone who was not copying encrypted material, but rather clear-text English (or whatever) could have the sender arrange the letters into 5-letter blocks without spaces for punctuation. That way, there would not be a tendency to recognize words/patterns, and become distracted. Copying clear-text language with the irregular spaces between words is definitely an advanced skill, particularly at speed, and requires an additional level of practice and concentration.

Once you are adept at copying random characters in blocks of 5 (ALL alphabetic, to start), you learn to copy clear-text messages. As noted, this takes excellent concentration, because if you pay any attention to the meaning of what you are copying, you will lose several characters (i.e., not copy them) while you're distracted.

The whole process relies heavily on maintaining intense concentration.... Even while copying random characters, you may miss a character "just because." The challenge here is to avoid the temptation to think (consciously)
something like "Oh, darn, I missed one!!" If you do, guess what -- you miss several more during that thought process!!! Then, if you "realize" you missed several more, you miss still more! One has to learn to ignore the fact that one missed a character or two, in order to correctly copy as many characters as possible.


The goal is to just have a blank mind -- no verbal thoughts in your head -- and let your subconscious hear the characters and your fingers hit the right keys automatically, without your conscious mind intervening.

This is tremendously like the type of concentration required in higher-level competitive shooting (which I've done a lot of.) Any time you find yourself with verbal thoughts (a sentence, comment, etc. in your inner dialogue) in your head, your mind is working much slower than it does when the subconscious is in control and your mind is blank.

For those of you who do shoot competition, here is a situation that is probably all too familiar. You are shooting a rifle standing, offhand, and the rifle settles down to almost absolute stillness, right on the X-ring. You realize that it's PERFECT!!, and you try to fire the shot before that few seconds of perfection get away from you.

Virtually always, the shot will NOT be a good one. Why? Because **when you realized the rifle was perfectly still, you had already broken your concentration!!**

If you shoot enough (quality) offhand practice, what happens is that the trigger squeeze becomes a subconscious act performed automatically -- and CORRECTLY!! -- in response to the stimulus of perceiving the correct sight alignment/sight picture. Your mind "sees" the right sight picture, and the rifle fires -- automatically -- without a conscious decision or "fire command" in your brain to activate the trigger.

In computer terms, the trigger squeeze becomes a subroutine that runs automatically without a conscious decision, when the mind perceives the correct sight picture. These shots, fired at this level of concentration, generally result in a fantastic level of accuracy. This process happens when firing in any of the positions, but is most dramatic when shooting standing, unsupported ("offhand"), due to the inherent effects of body movement involved.

When shooting offhand competition (such as rifle silhouette, Highpower Rifle (Service Rifle or Match Rifle), or the 50-yard one-handed slow fire portion of NRA Outdoor Pistol ("Bullseye), if you find your concentration disrupted, it's best to *put the firearm down*. Take a couple of breaths to re-charge on oxygen, look at objects at varying distances (to restore best focus to your eyesight), and then start the entire process of your shot delivery again.

We all get distracted, and think "Oh, I can hold it just a *bit* longer and get a 10".... and it's virtually always too late by that time. Yes, when you luck into a 10 or X under those conditions, it's a big thrill -- in psychology terms, a strong positive reinforcement, or reward. That's like gambling with a slot machine and hitting the jackpot every so often. The thrill of the infrequent win is enough to keep you pulling the handle, even though the net result is a loss.

Back to Morse Code... We learned Numbers after we'd become adept at copying random alphabetic characters only -- I want to guess we might have started training in Numbers after reaching 12 or 14 GPM. Thus, learning Numbers did not conflict with our basic learning of the alphabet. By the time we started Numbers, we had the alphabet well memorized/conditioned, so adding numbers didn't interfere with that training.

After numbers came "special characters," -- characters that aren't used in English, but would be used in a particular foreign language that we might want to copy. So, each "set" of characters was thoroughly learned before introducing a new set of characters.

Thus, step-wise progression is the key to learning Morse Code efficiently. If you don't need to copy faster than, say, 8-10 GPM, that cuts a lot of training time off of what we spent developing our skills. Not having to learn special characters is another nice break.

Morse Code was used long into/through the Cold War, and continues in use today at times, despite its seemingly primitive nature. The reason is that "CW" (Continuous Wave) Morse Code is simple to generate, and can be broadcast and received successfully over very long distances and in very bad broadcasting (atmospheric) conditions.

It is an art that may well come back into prominence at some point in our future, depending on how politics shapes our world.

I hope this helps,
John