Morse Code

In the past, I've used several resources to teach about Morse Code (we usually do Samuel Morse in our grade 2 Famous Inventors block). I have Samuel Morse, That's Who! The Story of the Telegraph and Morse Code by Tracy Nelson Maurer, a handy set of Morse Code Flashcards, and a wonderful collection of vintage telegrams.

And there's a good illustration of telegraph lines snaking across the country in Locomotive by Brian Floca.

There is a BIG difference, however, between teaching about the concept of Morse Code and learning Morse Code. I'm determined to learn it.

I well remember sitting in the living room, reading the encyclopedia, and memorizing the two letter postal abbreviations of all 50 states when I was a child (just for fun), and learning the International Radio Phonetic Alphabet when I was in my 30s (just for fun), and now I want to learn Morse Code.

For Spy Science, Morse is our final cipher (it's actually technically a cipher and not a code). The plan is to introduce it on the last Science Club before Winter Break and then to have a Morse Message of the Day up on the board for the children to decode at the start of Science Club each meeting in 2025.

My New Year's Resolution is now everyone's New Year's Resolution!

So now we come to the tricky part. How to learn it? For this, I am turning to Cheaper by the Dozen and the inimitable Frank Gilbreth. Efficiency expert par excellence, he not only turned learning this into a game for his children, he came up with an excellent way to memorize each letter!

You can find this section of the book by printing pages 73-74 of this PDF.

For tomorrow's Science Club, we will talk about the idea of short and long -- dots and dashes -- and explore it in several ways. When the telegraph was invented, people assumed they would have to look at the printout to see the dots and dashes, but the operators actually realized almost immediately that they could just do it by ear as the machine was chittering away.

So I think that doing this with sounds is going to be the best way to learn it.

1 - look at Morse Code Flashcards

2 - demonstration by Ms. Kamea, our tap dancer special guest

3 - tell the children how to spell each of their names in Morse Code

4 - read relevant section of Cheaper by the Dozen

5 - work on creating our own alphabet based on Gilbreth's method (a student who plays the viola has volunteered to play the patterns for each letter so we can listen and try to think of words that have the same pattern)

The only ones given in the book are the first four:

A, a-BOUT
dot dash

B, BOI-ster-ous-ly
dash dot dot dot

C, CARE-less CHIL-dren
dash dot dash dot

D, DAN-ger-ous
dash dot dot

I'm really looking forward to this!!! I also found a few letter ideas here.

UPDATE: Here is what we have come up with. The children did a great job!!!

E, one dot (memorize)

F, fab-ri-CA-tion
dot dot dash dot

G, GO GADG-et
dash dash dot

H, four dots (memorize)

I, two dots (memorize)

J, en-JOY JILL'S JAM
dot dash dash dash

K, KAI-a CALLS
dash dot dash

L, li-NO-le-um
dot dash dot dot
credited to preraphaelite

M, MY MY
dash dash
credited to preraphaelite

N, NEP-tune
dash dot

O, OW! OW! OW!
dash dash dash

P, pre-TEND PRIN-cess
dot dash dash dot
credited to off_coloratura

Q, QUEENS QUICK-ly QUARREL
dash dash dot dash

R, ram-BUNC-tious
dot dash dot
credited to derspatchel

S, three dots (memorize)

T, TREE
dash

U, un-se-CURED
dot dot dash

V, va-va-va-VOOM
dot dot dot dash
credited to off_coloratura

W, a-WARD WINGS
dot dash dash

X, X-ray ma-CHINE
dash dot dot dash

Y, YEL-low YO YO
dash dot dash dash

Z, ZIP ZEST-ful-ly
dash dash dot dot

dictionary.com and howmanysyllables.com are useful for this exercise!

GO GADG-et and YEL-low YO YO are also mentioned on the derspatchel site, but the kids came up with those on their own so I'm giving them the credit.

We think that "e" is one dot because it's the most frequent letter and that would be the shortest to tap out. There are three other letters that are all dots. We have to memorize them because there is no such thing in English as a word without any stresses. Luckily for us, in order they spell "ish."

Note: We will not cover the wireless telegraph tomorrow, but I do have some resources for the next time it comes up (usually in the context of Titanic).

Expedition To Salvage Titanic's Wireless Telegraph Gets The Go-Ahead
NPR - May 20, 2020

Titanic, Marconi and the wireless telegraph

Guglielmo Marconi and Radio (Science Discoveries) by Steve Parker

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