Learning Your 爱比西s
Translating Chinese into Morse code!
@thisisfranklin, !!con NYC 2020
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The Chinese Telegraph
Code of 1871
Take the most commonly used
characters (~5,400)
Map each of them onto 4 digits
(0000 to 9999)
Image: Obsolete Chinese telegraph code, Viguier 1872, Wikipedia
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The Chinese Telegraph Code of 1871
https://translate-chinese-into-morse-code.glitch.me/
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Implications
● ~3,000 unused spaces
● Verbose and slow
Image: Obsolete Chinese telegraph code, Viguier 1872, Wikipedia
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Plaintext vs secrets
Saved money by having words that
meant more:
● “Toothbrush” (secret) for
“telegram has been delayed in
transmission”
● “Gasping” (secret) for “send the
goods that are ready, and
expedite the remainder”
To recoup costs, priced “secret”
messages higher per word
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Trigraphs?
4 digits 104 10,000
4 letters 264 456,976
3 letters 263 17,576
A fancy word for “three alphabet letters”