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Everyone Knows Morse: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:International Morse Code.svg|thumb|400px|Now you know Morse, too.]]
{{quote|''Friday afternoon, I'm walking home from school and I'm watching some men build a new house. And the guy hammering on the roof calls me a paranoid little weirdo. In Morse code.''|'''[[Emo Phillips]]'''}}
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There were also a few common abbreviations, such as the "30" which indicated the end of a news wire story, which trace their roots to landline or wireless telegraphy.
[[I Thought It Meant|Not to be confused]] with [[Inspector Morse]] being recognized everywhere.
{{examples|. -..- .- -- .--. .-.. . ... (Examples)}}
== [[Anime|.- -. .. -- .]] / .- -. -.. / [[Manga|-- .- -. --. .-]] (Anime
* Played with and slightly subverted in ''[[Pokémon Special]]'' when Professor Rowan's lab assistant Roseanne is stuck when the lab is attacked by Yanmegas. She has the idea to turn the lights on and off in order to attract attention from the outside, and thus call for help as the Yanmegas are drowning out her voice due to their supersonic buzzing. [[Idiot Hero|Diamond]] notices this, and tells Sebastian, a butler, about it. Sebastian then proceeds to flash back a message using his Chinchou. Diamond realizes something and points out this is kinda stupid when they really should just head over and check out whats going on. Sebastian agrees.
** In an earlier, Pryce would tap his cane on the ground to non-verbally communicate with his Pokemon. Apparently Pokemon can learn Morse code as well.
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* Amusingly subverted in ''Developers'' (a prequel to ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'' about the construction of the very first Zaku). When they discover the radiation from the mech's experimental reactor is disrupting their wireless communications, they attempt to communicate with the crew in the work area by flashing lights in morse code, only to find out the only thing anybody there knows in morse is how to say "please respond", leading to an [[Overly Long Gag]].
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', when {{spoiler|Pride and Alphonse}} are both trapped in a huge stone prison made by alchemy, {{spoiler|Pride}}, helpless to escape, grabs a stick and starts banging on Alphonse's helmet. It isn't until it's too late that the heroes realize that he's been banging out the equivalent of a morse-code message, transmitted through the underground tunnels, telling Father their position.
* ''[[Zipang]]'' averts this trope in the scene where a [[World War II]] fuel tanker communicates with the time-displaced ship ''Mirai'' before making a rendezvous with it. The Morse code conversation is done at a realistic speed, the coding of ''Mirai''{{'}}s reply is so regular that it's obvious to the viewer that it's being sent by computer instead of by hand, and both sides of the conversation have to wait for the messages to end before being able to understand them.
== -.-. --- -- .. -.-. / -... --- --- -.- ... (Comic Books) ==
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** A subtle [[Shout-Out]] there in the title, as a Morse sender's individual style and rhythm of sending is called his or her "fist."
* ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'': The short story "[[P. G. Wodehouse|What Ho]], [[H.P. Lovecraft|Gods of the Abyss]]" had a one-off joke about [[Jeeves and Wooster (novel)|Bertie]] trying to signal to [[The Jeeves|Jeeves]] by coughing in Morse code. Jeeves came running, but it turned out later that he didn't recognize the signal and just thought Bertie was choking.
* [[Mad]] Magazine's ''Spy vs. Spy'' contained one token line of code, the author's Morse signature "BY PROHIAS".
== ..-. .. .-.. -- ... (Films) ==
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'''Bind:''' ''I'' don't know.
'''Simpkins:''' Oh, give it here! }}
* In the film ''[[
** The same is true of most depictions of the ''RMS Titanic'' – the one notable exception being the book ''Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan'' (1898) which failed to predict the 20th century impact of Marconi's apparatus in time of maritime disaster. Titanic was launched in April 1912, so any coverage of the history now inherently becomes a [[Period Piece]].
* In [[Let the Right One In]], Oskar copies down Morse Code from a library book so he and Eli can communicate through the common wall they share for their neighbouring bedrooms. Later, Abby uses Morse to tap out the message 'hi' when knocking on Oskar's door. At the end, when she's in her trunk she and Oskar tap out the word 'kiss' to one another.
* [[U-571]] had a bound German sailor aboard a captured U-Boat tapping out a message with a wrench so that another German warship in the area would hear on Sonar... {{spoiler|I am U-571... destroy me!}}
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== .-. . .- .-.. / ... .... .. - (Real Life) ==
* The BBC started off their [[World War Two]] wartime radio news broadcasts with the first four notes of [[Ludwig Van Beethoven|Beethoven's]] Fifth Symphony, in order to symbolize the "V" for victory.
** Morse Code was ubiquitous in both world wars. Often the messages it carried were secret communications from spies or encrypted in some form - the German Enigma code being the most famous (or infamous).
* During the Vietnam War, some US POWs, downed aviators, were forced to make televised statements by their Vietnamese captors. They actually used this method to make it clear that they had been tortured and otherwise coerced into making these statements. When the Vietnamese found out, they stepped it up. The first one was some USN or USAF pilot; he began blinking in the middle of his first such appearance, claiming that the harsh studio lights were hurting his eyes!
** It is believed that Jeremiah Denton and John McCain (both future Senators) were the first to try this.
*** this was referenced on the NPR radio show "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!", in the context of ads for WalMart. ("They show employees... but they're blinking funny."
* Real Life subversion: The British Special Air Service reportedly provides training in Morse code for emergency backup communication, counting on the fact that proficiency in its use is no longer common knowledge.
*
* The city of Pittsburgh recently failed at this. [http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2009/07/12/A-Morse-Code-typo-lights-city-skyline/stories/200907120242] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fTYzoSDAS4] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iE9yyYQlsc] Later they tried to fix it and [http://gadling.com/2009/07/13/famous-pittsburgh-morse-code-landmark-actually-spells-pitetsbkrr/ replaced "PITETSBKRRH" with "TPEBTSAURGH"].
* In the 1930s and '40s, newspaper columnist Walter Winchell had an extremely popular radio show in which he noisily tapped a telegraph key while he spoke his text into a microphone. His opening catchphrase for each edition contained a reference to "all the ships at sea". Gullible listeners were supposed to be impressed that Winchell could read his text aloud and transmit it in Morse at the same time. Actually, his telegraph transmissions were gibberish.
** People back then were familiar with highly-trained operators in radio and telegraph offices, who could send and listen to messages almost simultaneously and instinctively (they understood the message by listening, no need to write it down). Of course, anyone of these skilled men would register immediately the hoax.
* The RMS ''Titanic'' was one of the first British ships to send the <span style="text-decoration:overline;">SOS</span> distress signal, interspersed with
* If you use Firefox, there's ''Leet Key'' add-on (as the name implies, also capable of converting input into [[Leet Lingo]], among the other things).
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