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[gfish]

Minor rant: You can't send morse code by tapping random objects, dammit.

Morse uses beeps of different lengths. If you can't send a dit that is distinct from a dah, it just isn't going to work. For example, R is di-dah-di. It might be tempting to think you could fudge that as tap-tap-(pause)-tap, but that doesn't work. You just sent 'ie' (di-di di) instead. Spacing is used to denote letter, word and sentence boundaries only. You might as well try to speak English without any consonants.

I know it's a very convenient plot tool to have people communicating between locked rooms by hitting a pipe with a wrench. But the only message they can send is "I'm hitting a pipe with a wrench!" Please, find a better solution.

Comments

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

There's a real-life horror story involving morse code, that now I'm just confused about.

When the Missouri was sunk in the Pearl harbor attacks, many watertight chambers still had guys alive inside, for as long as several days until they suffocated.

According to the version of the story that I heard, these poor doomed souls were able to communicate with people up above with morse code, tapping on the metal of the ship. And people up top were able to talk back at them.

I don't think the different between a pause and a dash is a deal-killer here, you just have to take long enough in your pauses to be able to tell them from a dash. I'm sure it helps to already have one's own rythm well established... I don't think it would work if you'd never done morse code before, and were trying to use a codebook for the first time.

Oh, and the reason it's a horror story, is because command at the time decided that resources were better spent on the surface, and not expensive rescues underwater.