The Earliest Days of Information Technology (IT)… Morse Code

by | Jan 21, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code

Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encodetext characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs.[3][4] Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the inventors of the telegraph.

Morse Code

Yeah, I was trained up on Morse Code in Radioman A School after Bootcamp at the US Naval Training Center (USNTC) in San Diego CA c1963. And, yes, I’m old.

What does that mean to my knowledge and experience in IT? It means everything!

Why? Because today’s Smartphone comes from that first analog frequency coding, later digitized using Baudot Code.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code

Baudot Code

The Baudot code[boˈdo] is an early character encoding for telegraphy invented by Émile Baudot in the 1870s.[1] It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the most common teleprinter code in use until the advent of ASCII. Each character in the alphabet is represented by a series of five bits, sent over a communication channel such as a telegraph wire or a radio signal.” The symbol rate measurement is known as baud, and is derived from the same name.

The very first Desktop Terminal!

This was the IT terminal I first used early in my career at the Western Union Telegraph Company (WU) in Los Angeles, CA.

Information Age

https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-verizon&q=teleprinter%20technology%20#imgrc=jmb6oQe0akgYOM

The very first Desktop teleprinter…

Was this that fun? Want to learn more. I’ll take you next time to the very beginning of the “Information Age!”

“Information Age” digital terminal…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Age

There you have it! Yeah, I’m old, but know more about IT than most on the planet.

This is why my heart and soul is so very connected to the value of IT. It’s the the platform for everything we do in the 21st Century. Would you agree?

Steve Sparks CEO Children and Families in Life After Trauma (CFLAT)

About the author

Steve Sparks is a retired information technology sales and marketing executive with over 35 years of industry experience, including a Bachelors’ in Management from St. Mary’s College. His creative outlet is as a non-fiction author, writing about his roots as a post-WWII US Navy military child growing up in the 1950s-1960s.
View all posts by Steve →

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