this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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Always been a bit annoyed that people describe Morse as a binary code, it isn't, it's technically trinary, you have 3 symbols, dot, dash, and space. Without a space you can't discern the difference between "hi" and "eeeeee".
I dunno that’s kind of like saying computer binary is trinary because there is a distinct separation of the bits
But there's not a distinct separation of the bits
There is more than one width of space as well. And indeed, there are sometimes tones longer than a dash used as control codes.
But it's a binary signal. It's either on or off. All the symbols are described using a binary signal. There is a regular clock that divides the signal and each interval of the signal is read as on or off. A dah is three dits wide, most spaces are one or three dits wide, etc.
Morse code is transmitted as a binary code, but that doesn't make Morse code binary. If that were the case the Latin alphabet would also count as binary because computers transmit it in binary. The rules you describe is the encoding between Morse code's native trinary alphanumeric encoding into a binary format for transmission.
It is about like the difference between SPI and I2C serial communications.
I struggled with that one for a little while. My intuition of serial is more like SPI where there is a dedicated clock structure from a clock source that is separate from the data transmission. Or like with UART serial where the clock baud rate must be known or set in advance to establish communications.
However, with I2C serial it is only a 2 wire data interface, and the clock is built into the data. That is the main serial communications method used for most analog-world type sensors, like temperature, pressure, real time clocks chips, and many slow types of EEPROM persistent memory. SPI is used for small simple displays in embedded devices, and stuff like the flash memory chip that stores your bootloader on your computer. UART is most often the remote serial terminal access on stuff like your computer and router, though all of these com peripherals have exceptions in use cases.
The way I2C works is that the data line is always held in a high state with a weak pull up resistor. The devices attached to this data line use NPN transistors to pull the line low. Then the protocol establishes who gets to talk and when and how.