Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
Spelling note: I don't know who this Morris character is, but Samuel Morse is the inventor of Morse code.
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...or at least what we use today is named after him.
Quote:
Originally Posted by boomergeek
Pretending that human operated single key coding is faster than two finger keying on a QWERTY keyboard is just a piece of propaganda.
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Nyet Comrade, that's a fact: Perhaps you can get out 40 words per minute with no errors using 2 fingers on your desktop keyboard at work - but you really gotta be fast. 40 WPM is really the low end of the upper speeds seen in regular use. I looked up the world speed record and it's a little over 75 WPM. There are many who cannot type with 10 fingers at that speed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
Don should be able to give us accurate details on milliwatt per mile.
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It is in the tens of millions of miles per watt. But that's a different topic, since modern digital techniques exceed that by nature of their coding gain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by boomergeek
My personal opinion is Claude Shannon did dramatically more, for the progress of communications theory, than Morse ever did: (Shannon did so much more engineering based on mathematics).
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Well, I most certainly disagree with several of your statements, but
that one I don't think anyone can dispute. Shannon - a mathematician! - was
simply brilliant.
Oh, and to amplify Al's comments: I don't know why he needs so many transistors (three or four!

), I can send code using a battery and some wire, maybe some carbon to simplify things. Not legal any more, because it pollutes the radio spectrum badly, but in a pinch, any electrical source and some conductors will allow me to send a signal several hundred miles.
Oh, and EricH - it is best to write Morse code like it sounds: "Dididit dah dah dah dididit" for SOS - your brain doesn't hear the tones as 'dot' and 'dash' but as dit and dah, writing it like it sounds helps increase understanding. Just a trick I've learned.
--... ...-- -.. . -. ..--- .. .-. --..
Don
PS: FIRSTers, if there's somehting you didn't understand - google it. You might be surprised.