These Virtual Telegraph Keys were created for www.ncsgreece.com as a hands-on experience for those who may have never been exposed to Morse Code.
If you don't know the code, click on a letter in the table to listen to its sound, then move your mouse over the key's knob to duplicate the sound. If you're an experienced telegrapher, you might find it a real challenge to generate properly spaced characters using the mouse. Have fun!

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For over three quarters of a century following the tragic sinking of passenger liner SS Titanic, the shipboard radio room 24-hour clock was a familiar fixture. Greenwich Mean Time was marked by the black hour hand, and local time was indicated by the light colored hour hand. The red wedges on the clock's face marked both 3-minute silence periods on 500 KHz during 15-18 and 45-48 minutes of each hour. The green zones on later clocks marked the silence periods on 2182 KHz. The two frequencies were designated for international calling and distress. During silence periods, only distress transmissions were authorized. The segmented outer red band was for timing 4-second dashes which served to activate auto-alarms tuned to 500 KHz.

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Some of the objects in the YouTube video above were used to create this image of the ship-to-shore CW section of U.S. Naval Communications Station, Nea Makri, Greece, the way it looked in 1968. This is where the final message from the USS Scorpion was received just before she was lost. Over four decades later that message has not been released to the public and remains highly classified.

Flash animations and artwork are original creations © j. roberson graphics 2009     

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