Morse Code Translator

Separate letters with a space and words with a slash (/). Dots can be typed as . • or ·, and dashes as - — – or _. Input made only of these symbols, slashes and spaces is read as Morse. A group that isn't a valid code shows as � and is listed under the result.

Words per minute, timed against the standard word PARIS. One unit lasts 1200 ÷ WPM milliseconds, so a dot is 60 ms at 20 WPM and 240 ms at 5 WPM.

Nothing. SOS is a distinctive Morse sequence, not an abbreviation; readings like "save our souls" came later. It became the international distress signal under the 1906 International Radiotelegraph Convention, which took effect in 1908. On air it is keyed as one unbroken sequence, with no gaps between the letters.

Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail. Morse's first code, around 1837, covered only numbers, and Vail extended it to letters and special characters in 1840. On 24 May 1844 Morse sent "What hath God wrought" from the US Capitol in Washington to Vail in Baltimore. In 1848 Friedrich Gerke reduced it to plain dots and dashes, and his version became the basis of International Morse, standardised in Paris in 1865.

International Morse, the standard used in the alphabet above. American Morse is Alfred Vail's original code, used on North American landline telegraphs. It has extra gaps inside C, O, R, Y, Z and &, and longer dashes for L and 0. It is now almost extinct: even radio amateurs in the US use International Morse almost exclusively.

Yes, mostly by radio amateurs, and it is allowed on every amateur band. It was the international standard for distress calls at sea until 1999, when the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System replaced it. Amateur licences no longer require it: the ITU made the Morse test optional in 2003, and the US dropped it in 2007.

Learn the sound of each character rather than the written dots and dashes. The Koch method, published by Ludwig Koch in 1936, starts at full speed with two characters and adds one each time you copy them with 90% accuracy. The Farnsworth method sends characters at full speed with extra gaps between them, then shortens the gaps as you improve.