I remember learning these letters as a Cub Scout in the 1950s. One of my grandfathers had been a telegraph operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and I believe at the time I viewed Morse Code as a useful skill to have as an adult.
I can still spell my name.
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Cool, never seen it organzied this way!
ReplyDeleteI've forgotten most of my Cub Scout dit's and dah's, but one set of letters I've never forgotten. When I was in high school ESP Disk issued the first album by Tom Rapp and Pears Before Swine. One catchy ditty, "Oh, Dear, Miss Morse," described the singer's carnal attraction to the woman in the title, and the chorus musically spelt out everyone's favorite rude word in Morse. It's still burnt into the adolescent lobe of my brain.
ReplyDeleteWe learned Morse code using words. The words started with the same letter as the Morse code letter, had the same number of syllables as dots and dashes, and any o's in the word were dashes. S = sahara (...), A = azot (.-), I = Ivan, H = harakiri, etc.
ReplyDeleteInteresting.
DeleteA couple more that I recall: E = Ed (.), L = lemonade-ee (.-..), O = oh-so-cold (---), T = ton (-). It has been a while, so I only recall some of the words.
ReplyDeleteNote that the words for S (sahara) and O (oh-so-cold) are opposite in both dots and dashes and in meanings. To send an SOS, one had to recall the silly phrase 'sahara oh-so-cold sahara'. I don't know if that was on purpose or by chance.