If your ship was sinking—how would you cry for help?
On April 15, 1912, as the Titanic slipped beneath the waves, its operators tapped out three letters that echoed across the Atlantic: S-O-S.
Morse code, developed in the 1830s by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail, uses dots and dashes—short and long signals—to represent letters and numbers. It condensed language into pure pattern, perfect for radio waves and telegraph wires.
Learning Morse code rewires the brain. You hear a sound, convert it to a symbol, then a word, then meaning—three levels of abstraction in seconds. That’s symbolic reasoning in action.
It sharpens memory, builds resilience, and connects you to the early age of global communication.
The message sent by the clotherspin keyer at the end of this clip—“CQ CQ CQ DE KF8BAB”—means: “Calling all stations. This is KF8BAB.”
A century later, the language of dots and dashes still calls out across the airwaves.