Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 7, 1995                   TAG: 9504080025
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MORSE CODE

Who, after all, would want to sit for hours, using our fingers to tap out messages like "... --- ...'' on little keys, when we can sit all day using our fingers to tap out messages like "sos/technonerdsinfi.net." on little keys?

Still, traditionalists among us note with some sadness the passing of the Morse code into utter oblivion, or at least the passing of its last important usage.

A week and a night ago, the U.S. Coast Guard - after nearly a century of monitoring clicks and clacks that carried news of ocean storms, ship arrivals and departures, and emergencies on the high seas - turned off its Morse code equipment. It will be replaced by modern communications technology using satellites and automatic navigation beacons and, doubtless, e-mail and voice mail and faxes.

The old guard in the Coast Guard is not too happy about this transition. The international language of the simple code of dots, dashes and spaces - named for telegraph inventor Samuel F. B. Morse - had ``the human touch,'' said Petty Officer Tony Turner, a radioman at the Coast Guard's Atlantic Communications Station in Chesapeake, Va. ``It's coming from a person's hand, through the air, into another man's ear - and there's no language barrier.''

Some old hands could speak the language at 35 words a minute. Some say the code is still the superior means of communications. ``Dots and dashes are probably the easiest things to detect bouncing off the atmosphere.''

But one must get with the program of newfangled technology. It's so much faster and efficient.

Maybe. Would things have been better for the Titanic if only voice mail had been available?

``Thank you for calling the International Mayday Communications and Tracking System. For administrative offices, please press 1. For a departmental directory, please press 2. For personnel in charge of icebergs, please press 3. Have a nice day.''