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Interesting tidbits regarding Titanic, Morse Code, and distress signals...

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  • Interesting tidbits regarding Titanic, Morse Code, and distress signals...

    Some may know this, some may not...

    11:40 PM, Ship's time. April 14, 1912.

    RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

    Shortly after midnight, Captain E. J. Smith orders the wireless operators to send out a distress signal.

    They send out CQD, and not SOS.

    They originally sent out: CQD CQD CQD CQD CQD CQD DE MGY (or some semblance thereof, accounts differ)

    If the Morse code were translated to "words", it would have looked something like this:

    CQD CQD CQD CQD CQD CQD
    FROM TITANIC

    CQD basically means, "All Stations: Distress". In other words, "to anyone listening: distress"

    DE translates roughly to "from", and MGY was Titanic's call letters.

    It wasn't until later in the calls for help that they started interspersing SOS into the distress calls.

    Tidbit: SOS as an "official" distress signal does not actually exist. The letters S, and O exist in morse code, but to tap out an actual SOS, would require tapping out an S, a quick pause, then the O, another quick pause, then the S, or something like this:

    ... --- ...

    Whereas, the "distress signal" that we know as SOS is actually this:

    ...--... (note the lack of space between the dots and dashes).

    At least I think all that is right...
    Skilled programmers aren't cheap. Cheap programmers aren't skilled.

  • #2
    I knew about the CQD thing from an episode of NCIS.

    Ducky was raving about it in one episode when they go to pick up a body of some guy who was manipulating the traffic lights to spell out SOS.
    The best professors are mad scientists! -Zoom

    Now queen of USSR-Land...

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    • #3
      CDQ, for those of you who may be wondering, means "Come Damn Quick."
      They say that God only gives us what we can handle. Apparently, God thinks I'm a bad ass.

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      • #4
        Quoth Sapphire Silk View Post
        CDQ, for those of you who may be wondering, means "Come Damn Quick."
        CQD: "Come Quick, Distress"
        The best professors are mad scientists! -Zoom

        Now queen of USSR-Land...

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        • #5
          Quoth Sapphire Silk View Post
          CDQ, for those of you who may be wondering, means "Come Damn Quick."
          Or Cool! Dairy queen!
          Honestly.... the image of that in my head made me go "AWESOME!"..... and then I remembered I am terribly strange.-Red dazes

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          • #6
            Quoth fireheart View Post
            CQD: "Come Quick, Distress"
            Oh, sure. That's the official story . . .
            They say that God only gives us what we can handle. Apparently, God thinks I'm a bad ass.

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            • #7
              Quoth mjr View Post
              ... --- ...

              Whereas, the "distress signal" that we know as SOS is actually this:

              ...--... (note the lack of space between the dots and dashes).

              At least I think all that is right...
              Not quite. The second time you typed it, you put two longs. SMS.

              I HATED the original phones that used a morse 'SMS' to signal a text message. I kept jerking my head around looking for who was sending a distress call!
              Seshat's self-help guide:
              1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
              2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
              3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
              4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

              "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

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              • #8
                Cqd was the official distress call until they realized how easily it could be confused so it was changed to sos. -.-. --.- -.. or ... --- ...

                De -.- -... .---- .--- ...- ..

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                • #9
                  Quoth Seshat View Post
                  Not quite. The second time you typed it, you put two longs. SMS.

                  I HATED the original phones that used a morse 'SMS' to signal a text message. I kept jerking my head around looking for who was sending a distress call!
                  Nice to know I am not the only one this has happened with

                  I use the general quarters alarm for a 688 sub as the ringtone for my husband. It tends to get heads to turn on the sub base if I am running errands or in the base hospital and he calls me
                  EVE Online: 99% of the time you sit around waiting for something to happen, but that 1% of action is what hooks people like crack, you don't get interviewed by the BBC for a WoW raid.

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                  • #10
                    I thought CQD stood for Come Quick, Dying.

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                    • #11
                      CQ used to be a general prefix for attention codes. It survives on Amateur Radio on it's own as an attention signal - easily remembered as "Seek You" - so a ham will routinely send "CQ CQ DE xxxxx" and listen for a reply. So CQD literally stood for "Attention, Distress" - but it was easily confused for many other CQx codes - and also for the plain CQ-DE "Attention from xxxxx" message above.

                      The backronym "Come Quickly, Danger" made for a good mnemonic, that is all.

                      It was common practice on both radio and wired telegraph to run Morse letters together into complete words, codes and other shortcuts. SOS is one of the most widely recognised instances of this. If you send .../---/... then it is the separate letters S, O, S - but ...---... is a single code which indicates a distress call. This new code was, IIRC, just being phased in around the time of the Titanic disaster, and was not yet officially expected, which is why CQD was sent at first.

                      These abbreviated codes do not usually appear on official Morse code sheets. You learn the basic alphabet first, and the rest comes naturally. SOS is one that does appear by itself on a code sheet relatively often.

                      And in this case, the letters really do stand for "Save Our Souls" - souls being the official term for people on board, including both crew and passengers. Even today, an emergency call in flight will soon have the controller asking "How many souls on board?"

                      In the event, I don't think it made any difference which code was sent. It made much more of a difference that the radio operator on board the nearest other ship was off duty and asleep, and operators on board other ships were busy with personal telegram traffic and thus couldn't hear the call. Subsequently, it was made mandatory for large ships to keep a constant listening watch (meaning multiple radio operators on rotation), and for non-emergency traffic to leave breaks every so often to permit distress calls to be heard.

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                      • #12
                        Quoth Chromatix View Post
                        In the event, I don't think it made any difference which code was sent. It made much more of a difference that the radio operator on board the nearest other ship was off duty and asleep, and operators on board other ships were busy with personal telegram traffic and thus couldn't hear the call. Subsequently, it was made mandatory for large ships to keep a constant listening watch (meaning multiple radio operators on rotation), and for non-emergency traffic to leave breaks every so often to permit distress calls to be heard.
                        Actually, there were several ships that heard the call. The Californian is the one you're referring to where the radio operator went to bed. If he had stayed on duty for about 15 more minutes, he may have heard the CQD.

                        The Frankfurt, Baltic, Olympic, and Carpathia are just a few of the ships that heard the distress call. I think they may have also heard it at Cape Race. Unfortunately, all of the ships were too far away. The Carpathia was the closest at 4 hours. Olympic was over 500 miles away (essentially 20+ hours) and heard the call.
                        Skilled programmers aren't cheap. Cheap programmers aren't skilled.

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