The EASY way to learn Morse Code
or practice for your FCC exams
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Why Two Codes...
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By Gary Presley, KE0I
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Before there was Microsoft or MacIntosh, there was American
and Continental - Morse, that is.
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Did you ever wonder why there came to be two varieties? The
code we call Morse - which some revisionist historians suggest would better
be called Vail, but that's another story - began as American Morse. Here's
the rest of the story, as taken from a WWW Page called "Telegraph Lore,"
maintained by Greg Raven, KF5N.
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"Morse telegraphy became the standard method of electrical
communication in both the United States and Europe due to its simplicity
and ability to work on inferior quality wires. In 1851, countries in Europe
adopted a new code known as 'continental' or 'international' code. This
new code was a modification of the original Morse. The new code eliminated
the characters using spaced dots which were found to cause errors in transmission
on undersea cables.
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The new code became the standard for all telegraph work except
in North America where the original Morse was used on all land-line circuits
(except for undersea cables).
Last Updated July 13 - 
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