Morse Code Translator

Choose direction (Text to Morse or Morse to Text), then type or paste your input. The output updates instantly.

Use Play, Pause, and Stop to run Morse timing. You can also play the audio and/or the light rendering of the morse code. You can also download generated audio as a WAV file.

Morse code was developed in the 1830s by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail for use with the electric telegraph, which was the first technology to send information faster than a human could physically travel. The original American Morse code of 1844 assigned short and long signals (dots and dashes) to letters based on their frequency in English: E (the most common letter) got a single dot, T a single dash.

The code was revised into International Morse Code in 1865 at a conference in Paris to standardise communication across European telegraph networks, which had each developed their own variations. This international version, still in use today, made dots and dashes more uniform in length and timing.

Morse was the dominant global communication standard for over a century. It was used extensively in both World Wars, and the distress signal SOS (··· --- ···) was adopted internationally in 1906 because it was easy to send and unmistakable, and not because it stood for anything in particular, despite the popular backronyms.

Morse is defined by timing ratios, not absolute speeds. The dot is the base unit:

• A dot = 1 unit
• A dash = 3 units
• Gap between signals within a letter = 1 unit
• Gap between letters = 3 units
• Gap between words = 7 units

Speed is measured in WPM (words per minute), standardised using the word "PARIS" as the benchmark. It takes exactly 50 units to transmit, making WPM calculations consistent.