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 Previous: NAB Hosts ARRL Beltway Hams |  Next: March ARECC Registration Opens Today |
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
March 10, 2001
This week, we surf to a Web site dedicated to the appearance of Samuel Morse's favorite child in audio-visual media.
I am a big movie fan (6-2, 222 pounds, more or less). Although you will rarely find me in the local movie house, when I am watching the tube at home, I am usually watching a movie on one of the numerous movie channels that come down the coax connected to my satellite dish.
Occasionally, while I am watching a flick, the air is suddenly filled with Morse Code. Since the code is unexpected and my code speed usually rusty, the dits and dahs come and go before I can decipher them. I am left wondering whether I missed a real message that had something to do with the plot of the movie or was it just some gibberish used to fill the air. Next time I see the movie, I will be ready to receive the code. However, there are so many films and so little time that I am not likely to view the same film twice, so I remain in the dark about the coded message.
 The Morse Goes To The Movies! Web page decodes "the code" in motion pictures. |
Well, turn up the house lights! No longer do I have to watch a film twice in order to learn the contents of a coded message. All I have to do is point my browser to Robbie Burnet's "Morse Goes To The Movies!" Web site , which lists the appearance of Morse Code in hundreds of motion pictures, cartoons, television shows, and commercials (thanks to Ron Hashiro, AH6RH, for the tip). Many listings indicate the gist of the coded message or whether the message was just coded nonsense.
As you would expect, the code appears in a lot of adventure movies especially Westerns, war, and spy flicks, but it also appears in unlikely film genre like comedies and romances. The code is everywhere! And, yes, Samuel Morse's invention does appear in a Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello surfin' epic called Muscle Beach Party.
Until next time, keep on surfin'.
Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, of downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, is an ARRL Life Member and an incessant contributor to QST and QEX (504 pieces in 22 years), not to mention the author of five ARRL books and contributor to a bevy of other ARRL titles. First licensed in 1969 as WN1LOU, he upgraded to WA1LOU in 1971. Stan began using computers with Amateur Radio in 1978 when he bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I computer and wrote BASIC programs to dupe contests and calculate antenna bearings. A virtual beach boy, Stan has been surfing the radio dials as long as he can remember, however, instead of surfing all over Manhattan and down Doheny Way, he now surfs the Internet searching for that perfect page. To contact Stan, send email to wa1lou@arrl.net.
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