jock123
Moderator
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#2 · Posted: 5 Jun 2023 11:46
A small addition to the above: there may be another explanation...
It's easy to assume that the system we know as Morse Code is the code which was invented by Samuel Morse, circa 1840, and that's that - but life is, apparently, more complicated than that.
Looking just below the surface, one finds that Morse Code was in fact developed by two people, Samuel Morse, and Alfred Vail, and there are those who maintain that, while the idea of using a code of signals of varying length to transmit messages by telegraph came from Morse, the actual system of how that was to be done was the work of Vail, and we should be talking about "Vail Code".
However, that aside, taking a slightly deeper look, one finds that the Morse Code has changed and developed over the years.
The initial code was quickly taken from America, and adopted in other countries, where it was not just used, but developed. In 1848, Friedrich Gerke produced the Hamburg Alphabet, which not only allowed for letterforms found in German, such as letters with umlauts (ü, etc.), but (perhaps more importantly) made dots and dashes regular in length. Morse and Vail had apparently required the operator to perform dashes of different lengths, depending on the character.
In turn, the Hamburg Alphabet was refined and adapted (for example, it didn't differentiate between "i" and "j", so wasn't suitable for some languages), until, in 1865, International Morse code was standardized, and used throughout the world, with the exception of the United States, which continued with American (or Railroad) Morse...
But enough of this inexpert ramble through the weeds of telegraphy, you say - how does it bear on what's happening in Cigars? I'm glad you asked!
Dot dash dot dot dot may not mean anything in International Morse, but it does mean "o" in the Hamburg Alphabet.
It's hard to believe that there would have been a radio operator in existence still plugging away at the Hamburg Alphabet at the time story came out (I had wondered if there might have been some security reason for doing this, in the manner of using the Navajo "wind talkers" of WWII to send messages which few could understand, but the differences to International Morse are fewer than the similarities, so it would probably be decipherable to an International Morse, and simpler to encypher a message, then transmit it by International Morse), but it's just possible that Hergé picked up an old encyclpædia or dictionary which had the Hamburg system in it, and used that.
However, Hergé also used correct International Morse in The Blue Lotus, and had been a Scout (Scouts often learned Morse), so he must have had a reliable source he used more often than not.
My inclination is that it still is the errant switch and not a dot we are looking at, but I thought in fairness that the alternative should be given!
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