I felt kinda bad about being mean to Len, so I'll try to meet him
halfway with a Morse code topic. So maybe we can ressurect this old one...

I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.

It is most certainly not.

Let us look at the situation.

Is the Dit a "0"?
Is the Dah a "1"?

Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait, what
is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

It isn't binary, and the way our noodles process it isn't binary.

It's not binary.

- Mike KB3EIA -

thats funny, the program i am writing represents it very nicely with just
1's and 0's.

"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...
I felt kinda bad about being mean to Len, so I'll try to meet him
halfway with a Morse code topic. So maybe we can ressurect this old one...

I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.

It is most certainly not.

Let us look at the situation.

Is the Dit a "0"?
Is the Dah a "1"?

Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait, what
is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

It isn't binary, and the way our noodles process it isn't binary.

It's not binary.

- Mike KB3EIA -

Dave wrote:
thats funny, the program i am writing represents it very nicely with just
1's and 0's.

Looking at it that way, all things that can be put into a digital
program are digital, such as photographs, word processing, database, etc.

Let us put it to the test, Dave.
Write out a short sentence, or even a CQ de (your callsign) in binary
format, and let me read it right off the screen. If Morse code is
binary, it will be no problem.

This is a screen readable approximation of me calling CQ

..-.- --.- -.. . -.- -... ...-- . .. .- .--. ... . -.-

it is not binary.

- Mike KB3EIA -



"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...

I felt kinda bad about being mean to Len, so I'll try to meet him
halfway with a Morse code topic. So maybe we can ressurect this old one...

I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.

It is most certainly not.

Let us look at the situation.

Is the Dit a "0"?
Is the Dah a "1"?

Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait, what
is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

It isn't binary, and the way our noodles process it isn't binary.

It's not binary.

- Mike KB3EIA -

In article ,
Michael Coslo wrote:

| I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.
|
| It is most certainly not.

It most certainly is.
....
| Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait, what
| is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

Try looking at it at a lower level -- stop looking at the dits and dahs.

Morse code is either on or off. 1 or 0. You're either emitting a
signal, or you're not -- there's no in between.

Looking up what binary means -- http://www.answers.com/binary --

bi na ry (b'n-r) pronunciation
adj.
1. Characterized by or consisting of two parts or components; twofold.

At the lowest level, there's only two components -- on or off, tone or
no tone. It certainly fits the definition.

Considering that `tone' = 1 and `no tone' = 0 ...

Longer periods of 1's = dahs
Shorter periods of 1's = dits
Short period of 0's = space between a dit or a dah.
Longer period of 0's = space between characters.
Even longer period of 0's = space between words.

It's not a particularly efficient binary code, but it *is*, at the
lowest level, binary -- there's only two states. It's certainly not
analog, or tinary, or ...

Now, to be fair, at a higher level, you could say it has four states
-- dit, dah, space between character, space between word. Which would
be quadrary (is that the right word? is it even a real word?) But
that doesn't mean it can't be binary at another level at the same
time.

| It isn't binary, and the way our noodles process it isn't binary.

I'm not sure that the way our brain processes it is relevant. RTTY is
binary (or do you disagree there too?) and yet our brain hardly
processes it's output in a binary manner.

| It's not binary.

If you say so. I doubt I've convinced you, but it's really all a
matter of how you look at it, and if you insist on looking at it in
only one way, nobody's going to convince you otherwise.

Why do I feel like I've just been trolled?

--
Doug McLaren, , AD5RH
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.

Michael Coslo wrote:
I felt kinda bad about being mean to Len,

When were you mean to Len, Mike?

Unless you count disagreeing with him and proving him wrong as "being
mean", you've been nothing but nice to him.

so I'll try to meet him
halfway with a Morse code topic.

His definition of meeting halfway is that you agree with him 100%.

So maybe we can ressurect this old one...

I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.

It is most certainly not.

Depends how you define "binary".

Let us look at the situation.

Is the Dit a "0"?

No.

Is the Dah a "1"?

No.

Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait,
what
is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

Key up is "0". Key down is "1". Also known as "space" and "mark",
respectively.

It isn't binary,

Depends on how you define "binary".

and the way our noodles process it isn't binary.

Different subject.

It's not binary.

Most Morse operators with any skill (that excludes Len) process a
complete character as one "sound". "didahdidit" is recognized as "L",
in the same way that when you hear the word "cat", you think of the
animal. The Morse operator does not think in terms of dits and dahs any
more than a person thinks in terms of the consonant and vowel sounds
(phonemes) making up "cat".

Of course *really* skilled Morse ops hear entire words as units of
sound. And at some level, they begin to think in Morse, just as fluent
speakers of a language think in that language.
Of course Len wouldn't know about that...

73 de Jim, N2EY

In article ,
Mike Coslo wrote:

| Let us put it to the test, Dave.
| Write out a short sentence, or even a CQ de (your callsign) in binary
| format, and let me read it right off the screen. If Morse code is
| binary, it will be no problem.

That's actually a reasonable test. And I shall give you an answer,
though I don't think you expected one. And I'm not Dave.

Here is a binary representation of `CQ DE K' (this gets rather tedious,
so I'll only do the first few characters) :

10111010111000111011101011100000001110101000100011 1010111000

And to explain that further --

dit = 1
dah = 111
space between dit/dah = 0
space between letters = 000
space between words = 0000000

So, `CQ DE K' translates to :

C 10111010111
000
Q 1110111010111
0000000
D 1110101
000
E 1
000
K 111010111
000

(the letters and newlines are there *only* to help make it readable.)

To play this back is very simple --

-- Pick a time period -- for example, 1 = 1/10 th of a second.
-- go through the list, going through each chracter --
1 = play a tone for 1/10th of a second
0 = be completely silent for 1/10th of a second

It's really that simple.

If you want a program to do it --

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# C Q D E K B 3 E I A P S E K
my $string = ".-.- --.-\n-.. .\n-.- -... ...-- . .. .-\n.--. ... . -.-" ;
foreach my $c (split (//, $string)) {
if ($c eq ".") { print "10" ; next } ;
if ($c eq "-") { print "1110" ; next } ;
if ($c eq " ") { print "00" ; next } ; # Only two 0s, because the last
# character ended with a 0.
if ($c eq "\n") { print "000000" ; next } ; # ditto, but 6.
}
print "\n" ;

And the output of your complete CQ in binary is :

10111010111000111011101011100000001110101000100000 00
11101011100011101010100010101011101110001000101000 101110000000
101110111010001010100010001110101110

new lines and spaces are added by me only to help it fit on the
screen.

| This is a screen readable approximation of me calling CQ
|
| .-.- --.- -.. . -.- -... ...-- . .. .- .--. ... . -.-

| it is not binary.

Binary.

--
Doug McLaren, , AD5RH
... Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.

Much to do about nothing

Morse code is sounds

Binary in the customary useage is ones and zeroes -- computer stuff.

--
Caveat Lector (Reader Beware)



"Doug McLaren" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Mike Coslo wrote:

| Let us put it to the test, Dave.
| Write out a short sentence, or even a CQ de (your callsign) in binary
| format, and let me read it right off the screen. If Morse code is
| binary, it will be no problem.

That's actually a reasonable test. And I shall give you an answer,
though I don't think you expected one. And I'm not Dave.

Here is a binary representation of `CQ DE K' (this gets rather tedious,
so I'll only do the first few characters) :

10111010111000111011101011100000001110101000100011 1010111000

And to explain that further --

dit = 1
dah = 111
space between dit/dah = 0
space between letters = 000
space between words = 0000000

So, `CQ DE K' translates to :

C 10111010111
000
Q 1110111010111
0000000
D 1110101
000
E 1
000
K 111010111
000

(the letters and newlines are there *only* to help make it readable.)

To play this back is very simple --

-- Pick a time period -- for example, 1 = 1/10 th of a second.
-- go through the list, going through each chracter --
1 = play a tone for 1/10th of a second
0 = be completely silent for 1/10th of a second

It's really that simple.

If you want a program to do it --

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# C Q D E K B 3 E I A P S E K
my $string = ".-.- --.-\n-.. .\n-.- -... ...-- . .. .-\n.--. ... . -.-"
;
foreach my $c (split (//, $string)) {
if ($c eq ".") { print "10" ; next } ;
if ($c eq "-") { print "1110" ; next } ;
if ($c eq " ") { print "00" ; next } ; # Only two 0s, because the
last
# character ended with a 0.
if ($c eq "\n") { print "000000" ; next } ; # ditto, but 6.
}
print "\n" ;

And the output of your complete CQ in binary is :

10111010111000111011101011100000001110101000100000 00
11101011100011101010100010101011101110001000101000 101110000000
101110111010001010100010001110101110

new lines and spaces are added by me only to help it fit on the
screen.

| This is a screen readable approximation of me calling CQ
|
| .-.- --.- -.. . -.- -... ...-- . .. .- .--. ... . -.-

| it is not binary.

Binary.

--
Doug McLaren, , AD5RH
.. Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.

"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
Dave wrote:
thats funny, the program i am writing represents it very nicely with
just
1's and 0's.

Looking at it that way, all things that can be put into a digital
program are digital, such as photographs, word processing, database, etc.

Let us put it to the test, Dave.
Write out a short sentence, or even a CQ de (your callsign) in binary
format, and let me read it right off the screen. If Morse code is
binary, it will be no problem.

This is a screen readable approximation of me calling CQ

.-.- --.- -.. . -.- -... ...-- . .. .- .--. ... . -.-

it is not binary.

11101011101001110111010111001110101001001110101110 01011101110111011100111001
11001110000
looks perfectly binary to me

to make it more readable try replacing 1 with - and 0 with spaces to get:
--- - --- - --- --- - --- --- - - - --- - --- - --- --- --- --- --- -
-- ---

Doug McLaren wrote:
In article ,
Michael Coslo wrote:

| I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.
|
| It is most certainly not.

It most certainly is.
...
| Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait, what
| is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

Try looking at it at a lower level -- stop looking at the dits and dahs.

At a lower level, anything is digital when you look at it that way. A
photograph, digital audio, whatever.

If Morse code was really digital, there would be no need to have a lower
level

Morse code is either on or off. 1 or 0. You're either emitting a
signal, or you're not -- there's no in between.

Ahh, so the space between the dits and dahs means nothing? There is
definitely an "in between" It is how we determine what the words a

...... is that the number 5, or is it HE or is it SI, or IS or EH?

Looking up what binary means -- http://www.answers.com/binary --

bi na ry (b'n-r) pronunciation
adj.
1. Characterized by or consisting of two parts or components; twofold.

At the lowest level, there's only two components -- on or off, tone or
no tone. It certainly fits the definition.

Considering that `tone' = 1 and `no tone' = 0 ...

Longer periods of 1's = dahs
Shorter periods of 1's = dits
Short period of 0's = space between a dit or a dah.
Longer period of 0's = space between characters.
Even longer period of 0's = space between words.

You have just described more than two states.

It's not a particularly efficient binary code, but it *is*, at the
lowest level, binary -- there's only two states. It's certainly not
analog, or tinary, or ...

Disagree. It isn't analog for sure, but with only a 1 and a zero, it
cant be described. Trying to describe it with 1's and 0's means that you
have to translate it. That longer dah, is not a 1. It cannot be the same
thing as the short dit. If both of them are 1's, the analogy fails

Now, to be fair, at a higher level, you could say it has four states
-- dit, dah, space between character, space between word. Which would
be quadrary (is that the right word? is it even a real word?) But
that doesn't mean it can't be binary at another level at the same
time.

| It isn't binary, and the way our noodles process it isn't binary.

I'm not sure that the way our brain processes it is relevant. RTTY is
binary (or do you disagree there too?) and yet our brain hardly
processes it's output in a binary manner.

| It's not binary.

If you say so. I doubt I've convinced you, but it's really all a
matter of how you look at it, and if you insist on looking at it in
only one way, nobody's going to convince you otherwise.

I'm saying that in order to have Morse code be binary, you have to
digitize it, so to speak. You have to have a clocking action, and a dah
has to either be something other than a "1" if the dit is considered a
"1". If it was truly digital, you wouldn't have to do any of that.

Why do I feel like I've just been trolled?

Isn't that what the group is about? here

- Mike KB3EIA -

In article ,
Michael Coslo wrote:

| At a lower level, anything is digital when you look at it that way. A
| photograph, digital audio, whatever.

Digital audio is digital if you look at it that way? Cute.

As for a photograph, a black and white photograph could be seen that
way -- after all, at the molecular level, a molecule of pigment is
either there or not there. It's quantized.

But no, not everything is digital. A specific sound isn't digital --
sure, you could approximate it with a digital stream, but ultimately
it's just an approximation, no matter how fast your digital stream is.

| If Morse code was really digital, there would be no need to have a
| lower level

Are you even thinking about what you're saying here?

If there's only one level, then a morse code signal would be just a
constant tone. It's hard to put much information into a constant,
unchanging tone. If you want to transmit some information, you're
going to need to have at least two states to choose from.

| Morse code is either on or off. 1 or 0. You're either emitting a
| signal, or you're not -- there's no in between.
|
| Ahh, so the space between the dits and dahs means nothing? There is
| definitely an "in between" It is how we determine what the words a

The space between the dits and dahs is `off' -- either 1, 3 or 7
zeros. The dits and dahs are `on', either one or three 1s.

Look at my other post where I converted your CQ call to a binary
representation of it.

| ..... is that the number 5, or is it HE or is it SI, or IS or EH?

If you feel that I claimed that the spaces are unimportant, then you
did not understand me very well. Spaces are represented by a number
of zeros, and dits and dahs by a number of ones. Binary.

| Longer periods of 1's = dahs
| Shorter periods of 1's = dits
| Short period of 0's = space between a dit or a dah.
| Longer period of 0's = space between characters.
| Even longer period of 0's = space between words.
|
| You have just described more than two states.

Sure -- I was trying to explain how it all boils down to two states.

RTTY usually carries information encoded with BAUDOT. (You do believe
that RTTY is digital, right? Even with that 1.5 baud stop bit?) Each
BAUDOT character is chosen by 5 bits -- that's 32 states, and then
there's the state of the shift, which gives you about 62 states (64 -
2, since two states don't matter.)

So RTTY/BAUDOT uses somewhere between 32 and 64 states. But you do
believe that that RTTY and BAUDOT are binary modulations or codes,
right?

| It's not a particularly efficient binary code, but it *is*, at the
| lowest level, binary -- there's only two states. It's certainly not
| analog, or tinary, or ...
|
| Disagree. It isn't analog for sure, but with only a 1 and a zero, it
| cant be described.

.... but I just did in my other post. It was a bit tedious, but hardly
impossible.

| Trying to describe it with 1's and 0's means that you
| have to translate it. That longer dah, is not a 1.

That is correct -- dah is not 1. It's three 1s in a row, followed by
at least one 0.

| It cannot be the same thing as the short dit. If both of them are
| 1's, the analogy fails

Sure. The short dit is just a single 1, followed by at least one 0.

| I'm saying that in order to have Morse code be binary, you have to
| digitize it, so to speak. You have to have a clocking action, and a dah
| has to either be something other than a "1" if the dit is considered a
| "1". If it was truly digital, you wouldn't have to do any of that.

Have you looked at your morse code key lately? It has two positions
-- on and off. That alone should be enough to let you realize that
it's binary.

Things like PSK31 and RTTY/BAUDOT aren't any different, except that
the computer does the translation down to the binary level rather than
your brain and your finger.

It could be argued that the human brain doesn't easily deal with
binary codes. Which would make sense -- many of us had a hard time
learning morse code, even at the slowest possible speed. Yet it's
only about 40 characters, which shouldn't be hard to memorize at all.

--
Doug McLaren, , AD5RH
"I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words."