Morse Code Translator
Slash separates words. Spacing is what Morse depends on.
A code shaped by how often letters are used
Morse is not arbitrary. Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail counted the type in a printer's case to find which letters English uses most, and gave those the shortest codes.
That is why E is a single dot and T a single dash — the two commonest letters in English — while Q and Z take four symbols each. It is a variable-length code optimised for frequency, which is the same principle behind modern compression, arrived at a century before information theory existed to explain it.
The timing is the code
Morse has no alphabet of characters, only durations. Everything is measured in one unit — the length of a dot:
- Dot — 1 unit
- Dash — 3 units
- Gap between symbols in a letter — 1 unit
- Gap between letters — 3 units
- Gap between words — 7 units
This is why decoding written Morse depends entirely on spacing. ... --- ... is SOS; ...---... with no gaps is ambiguous, and that is a real limitation rather than a quirk of this page.
SOS was chosen because it is easy, not because it stands for anything
It does not mean "save our souls" or "save our ship". Those are later inventions. SOS was adopted in 1906 because ... --- ... is an unmistakable rhythm, unlikely to be confused with anything else and easy to send by someone in a panic.
It is properly sent as one continuous string with no letter gaps, which is why it is sometimes written with a bar over it.
Speed, and what "words per minute" means
Morse speed is measured against the word PARIS, which takes exactly 50 time units including its trailing gap. At 20 words per minute a unit is 60 ms; at 40 wpm it is 30 ms.
Skilled operators work at 20–35 wpm. The record is above 75, which is faster than most people can type.
It is still in use
Commercial maritime Morse ended in 1999, but it survives in amateur radio, where its narrow bandwidth means a signal gets through when voice cannot; in aviation, where navigation beacons identify themselves in Morse; and as an accessibility input method for people who can control only a single switch.
Common uses
- Puzzles and escape rooms, which are fond of it.
- Amateur radio practice.
- Decoding a message from a film, a game or a geocache.
- Learning the alphabet by looking up letters.
Questions people ask
Does SOS stand for anything?
No. It was chosen in 1906 because ... --- ... is an unmistakable rhythm. 'Save our souls' was invented afterwards.
Why is E just one dot?
Because Morse and Vail counted letters in a printer's type case and gave the commonest letters the shortest codes. E and T are the two most frequent in English.
How do I write spaces in Morse?
A slash, or a much wider gap. The spacing between letters and words is part of the code, not decoration.
How fast is Morse code?
Skilled operators work at 20–35 words per minute. Speed is measured against the word PARIS, which takes 50 time units.
Is Morse code still used?
Yes — in amateur radio, for aviation navigation beacons, and as an accessibility input method for single-switch users.
None of this is security
The ciphers on this site are historical. Every one of them was broken centuries ago, and a modern computer breaks them in microseconds — the Caesar page shows the break happening rather than just describing it.
They are worth knowing for puzzles, for teaching, for reading old texts and for understanding where cryptography came from. They are not worth using to protect anything. If you need something kept secret, you need modern encryption with a properly managed key, and you should not be building it yourself.
The encodings — Morse, binary, hex, NATO — make no secrecy claim at all. They exist to move information over a channel, and anyone can read them.
Your text stays in the page
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is transmitted, logged or stored, and this site has no server that could receive it. The about page lists every request the site makes.