The code is actually quite slow at only about 14-15 groups per minute. Try listening to code at over 40 groups (200 letters or numbers) per minute. It starts to sound like machine gun fire once you reach about 30 groups per minute. I still have nightmares of my time in the Army learning Morse Code. 10 hours of sitting at a keyboard with dit dit dah dit…..blasting in my ears. At that time, our military hardly used Morse Code in an unencrypted format, but the enemy still used it and the fun part came with the interception, scrambling/jamming, vector location of the source, and other more devious manipulations. Our military used Morse Code to some extent in the field but the sender and receiver units were dedicated and needed to be set to the same predetermined and variable “key.” The field units would convert a typed message to code, compress the code, and send it in short micro-bursts so the enemy couldn’t triangulate the position of the sender. The receiver unit would then uncompress the code, apply the appropriate decryption, and display or print the message. With that said, it has been over 17 years since I’ve used Morse Code and I had to listen to the code 4 or 5 times to obtain the coords. It took almost two years before my mind stopped reading road signs in Morse Code while driving down the highway. I wonder if Morse Code is even used in the military at this time?
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