The average US citizen listens to radio 22 hours a week. In the United States radios outnumber people by about three-to-one. For people in most countries of the world “radio” represents the number one source of news and information. Even so, all is not well with this pervasive medium. But let’s not get ahead of our story, a story that has its roots in the little device called the telegraph. There were telegraph keys for tapping out messages and magnetic coils that respond to incoming signals by making clicking sounds that are spaced to represent dots and dashes. This device was the first widely-used electronic form of communication.

The dots and dashes represent letters of the alphabet. Samuel Morse of “Morse Code” fame invented this system in 1836. Morse code is still used as a medium of communication – primarily because for long distance communication the dots and dashes survive interference and radio static much better than the human voice.

Amateur radio licenses require “Morse Code” proficiency. We’ll reproduce the alphabets as it would look in International Morse Code. Who knows, you may find yourself in an emergency situation some day and have to tap out an SOS distress signal. As you can see, as SOS would be: dot, dot, dot, (pronounced dit, dit, dit) dash, dash, dash (pronounced da, da, da), and then dot, dot, dot.

There are a few additional elements and characters in International Morse Code, but the ones listed above are the most used. Aided by wires strung from pole to pole across the country, the telegraph eventually put the pony express out of business. It’s easy to see why. A rider on a horse could take days – maybe even weeks – to deliver a message in the sparsely populated old west. The telegraph was virtually instantaneous. Of course, the telegraph was just the first of a string of inventions throughout the history that threatened the existing order of things. Invariably, people who wanted to hang on to the old way of doing things vigorously fought these new inventions.

There are a few additional elements and characters in International Morse Code, but the ones listed above are the most used. Aided by wires strung from pole to pole across the country, the telegraph eventually put the pony es we will soon see, newspapers were threatened by radio, and films were threatened by radio and television.

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Western Union Internal Memo, 1876]

Not too long after the telegraph was invented, Alexander Graham Bell invented an even better way of communicating: the Telephone. Bell transmitted the human voice over wires for the first time in 1876. There were no dials or pushbuttons on telephones; you had to place every call through an operator and a switchboard.