In 1906, discussions about a universal danger signal continued at the second Berlin Radiotelegraph Conference. With so many different signals for distress, you can probably see why the lack of a universal messaging could be problematic. Navy employed NC, the International Code of Signals maritime flag signal for distress. At that time, each country had their own way to communicate distress. By 1904, discussions began in the shipping community about distress signals. The wireless telegraph revolutionized ship to ship and ship to shore communication. Before that, ships were only able to communicate with other ships or the shore when in visual range. Guglielmo Marconi led the charge in making Morse Code available on ships. In other words, CQD communicated the message, “General Notice, Distress!” While some believe CQD stands for “Come Quick, Danger,” this handle was made up after the fact, and was not Morse’s original intent. This was opposed to a specific message sent to a specific office for a specific person. CQ, in combination, meant “general notice.” It was designed to notify anyone within listening range that a message was about to come across the lines. Samuel Morse developed the first distress signal, CQD. Two letters of the alphabet are a series of three, with O consisting of three dashes, and S consisting of three dots. The letter “E” and the letter “T” are the shortest, with E being assigned a single dot and T a single dash. Dashes are represented by an electrical pulse of three units of measurement.Įach letter of the alphabet, along with Arabic numerals and some punctuation, was assigned a unique combination of dots and dashes to represent it. Dots are an electrical pulse of one unit of measurement. Using a series of dots and dashes to represent the letters of the alphabet, telegraphers could communicate messages by sending pulses of electric current through telegraph wires. Morse Code was developed by Samuel Morse in 1835. The Maritime community adopted SOS as a distress call specifically for ships, based on Morse Code. What is true, however, is that SOS is undeniably a distress signal. What does SOS stand for? Many people believe SOS is short for “Save Our Ship,” or “Save Our Souls,” but this is actually not true.
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