Talk:American Morse code
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In the image of the 1911 Chart of the Standard American Morse Characters, what is the bottom character in the right column?
- It is a stylized P, which is the typographical symbol for "new paragraph". According to G. M. Dodge's 1917 edition of The Telegraph Instructor, the four-dash Morse Code symbol meant "paragraph [drop a line]".Thomas H. White 19:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] What hath god wrought?
I added some history of the first telegraphed message a while back, but I'm still unclear about one thing... Did the original message sent by Sam Morse include a quesiton mark? or was it simply "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" leaving the punctuation to be added by Vail when he received the message? Phauge 05:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
- A photograph of the message tape is at: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/n_telegraph_message.htm The transmission ended with a single dash for closing letter T of WROUGHT, and the question mark was added as being implied based on the sentence that was sent. Thomas H. White 6/16/2006
- Thanks! Phauge 22:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge with Morse Code?
Maybe I just don't know enough about Morse Code in general, but I don't see the point to this article. It really seems as if this should be merged with the regular Morse Code article. There is no European Morse Code article, and the Wabun Code article is short enough so that it could also be covered in the Morse Code article. Does anyone have a problem if I merge the articles into one? Phauge 06:08, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't look like a good candidate for a merger, and consensus seems to be against it on the talk page for this. At the very least there is simply too much information on American Morse code to neatly merge into Morse code. I'm removing the tags so this gets out of the backlog. Orchid Righteous 18:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Incredibly Confusing!
This is the most confusing entry I've seen on Wikipedia. Good writing is about CLARITY. You should NEVER present a subtopic that can be confused for the main topic. The average person looking up Morse Code can easily end up here from a Google seach, and not know the difference between International and American. They are probably looking for a lookup table and may print out the top chart thinking that is it. Some kid may be looking it up to try code with his friends, or may be doing a report and looking for a table to print.
Clarity requires an introduction that avoids this probable confusion and makes it crystal clear this is an OBSOLETE VARIANT of the Morse Code used in Ham Radio and other communications, and that this version is presented here for historical purposes only. Many kids would just assume Amercan must be the standard and (unless they are reading more deeply), not realize that it has been pretty much dead for generations. The difficulty in writing clearly (i..e., putting American Morse Code should be under a HISTORY subhead in main Morse Code article) is not much of an excuse for a poor presentation.
The International vs. American table is similarly deceptive. If you are learning code, NO ONE needs American other than for the history. If you try to use this information, you will be unable to communicate in code. Personally, I was just looking for a lookup table, not a history lesson, and would have printed the table and been fooled had I not known enough code to know the table was wrong. Any table presenting potentially confusing information should be clearly labeled and late in the article, with standard (i.e., International) Morse Code at the top
