Morse Code

I had no idea what to write about, so I randomly googled "this day in history". I found out that on this day in 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first message in morse code. (And what were his first words? "What hath God wrought?")

It's really a great invention, and morse code has been used for a very long time. The useful thing about this code is that it doesn't have to be written. Each letter is represented by a collection of dots and dashes (or short and long signals, as the case may be). This gives it great versatility, so that you could send a message in morse code by radio, writing, foghorn, flashlight, or basically anything.

Now you're probably wondering: what does this have to do with fandoms? The short answer is: nothing. But I can loosely relate this to a fandom.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle invented his own code, the Dancing Men Cipher. In one of the Sherlock Holmes stories called "The Adventures of the Dancing Men", a woman keeps receiving these strange notes with dancing men on them. It turns out, the dancing men are a code.

Yes, it's missing some of the letters. That's because Doyle didn't use all the letters in the story. That means there are a few letters that we don't know how to use. There are different ideas as to what symbols these letters might have. (See here and here if you want to know what the missing letters might be.)

Long story short: codes are awesome.