Commercial Use of Morse Code Ends .c The Associated Press By CALVIN WOODWARD WASHINGTON (AP) - What God hath wrought, new technology has put out of business. Morse code, the old language of dots and dashes, has been consumed by the age of bytes. Months after the code was abandoned under international convention for ships in distress, the only private U.S. network of coastal radio stations using Morse has turned off the transmitters. With that, mariners and Morse practitioners say, a long antiquated but eminently reliable form of communication has ended in U.S. commerce. A final ceremonial message was tapped out last week to Washington, where the first such message originated 155 years ago. On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse's question, ``What hath God wrought?'' pulsed along 35 miles of steel wire to Baltimore. Simple but slow, the telegraph was overtaken generations ago by the telephone, by data systems capable of reproducing printed words at the receiving end, and by satellite for most forms of communication. But until the newest generation of satellite and computer technology took hold, Morse code endured for seafarers, chilling all who heard the distress signal put into effect after the sinking of the Titanic - three dots, three dashes and three dots meaning SOS. Now e-mail is within easy reach for many mariners and modern ships have global positioning systems allowing rescuers to zero in on them. ``Morse code has finally met its match,'' says Tim Gorman, operations director for Globe Wireless, the company that dropped the curtain on commercial radiotelegraphy by ceasing transmissions at its four stations in Half Moon Bay, Calif., and Slidell, La. Last week the World War II-era Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien, docked in San Francisco harbor, transmitted a Morse farewell to President Clinton. ``History is made on this day as we embark on a new era of communication,'' it began. The message was translated back into English and sent to the White House the modern way, via e-mail. It was acknowledged with an automated e-mail response from the White House, no hands on deck. The International Maritime Organization officially phased out Morse code Feb. 1 for ships in peril, replacing it with the high-tech Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. The U.S. Coast Guard ceased Morse operations several years ago and no longer monitors radio frequencies used for the code, spokesman Ed Brady said. But it will respond if it happens to hear that infamous, now archaic, SOS. ``There's no government facility listening,'' he said. And now with the loss of the radio stations, there is ``nobody privately listening,'' Morse experts say the stations, KFS, KPH, WCC and WNU, were the last commercial radiotelegraph operations in North America. They continue to beam shipping information, news and weather to ships at sea as part of the larger Globe Wireless network using satellites and high-frequency radio. The technology now considered a tortoise was an astonishing hare in its time. ``Information will be literally winged with the rapidity of lightning,'' the Baltimore weekly Niles National Register reported after Samuel Morse made his historic transmission. Space and time were ``annihilated.'' The invention eventually ended the age of news dissemination by pony express, steamer and courier pigeon. The Associated Press, formed four years after Morse's demonstration, rose on the strength of the expanding telegraph as information that once took days or weeks to go from city to city sped to its destination in minutes. Reports from the Civil War, greetings between distant relatives, dispatches on market prices in far-off places - all could be sent in the time it took to reach the telegraph office. At first it consisted of clicks; later, tones. An international Morse code was developed that was more suitable for foreign languages. With the advent of radio, the electronic Morse signals sent by cable also could be transmitted over the airwaves. One hundred years ago, a radio message set off the first known Morse-inspired rescue at sea when a lightship saw the steamer Elbe run aground off Dover, England. Radiotelegraphy penetrated the wildest tempests. ``We have seen and heard reports that when a ship gets into a bad storm and gets into trouble, the first thing to go is satellite communications,'' said Kevin Layton of the Canadian Coast Guard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which monitors busy North Atlantic sea lanes. ``Morse code was right there 'til the ship flipped under the water.'' Morse continues to be used in poorer parts of the world and is popular with ham radio enthusiasts. U.S. naval ships seeking silent communication still use the code with flashing lights. Another vestige remains, although those who practice it are surely oblivious. The rhythmic beat by fans in sports arenas - dum-dum, dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum - is Morse code for the numbers 7 and 3. By telegraphers' shorthand, 73 means best wishes. AP-NY-07-18-99 1338EDT Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.