How exactly was morse code transmitted?

Question

I see it used a lot in old movies, people communicating over great distances with dots and dashes

If the signal is bounced off the ionosphere how does the person receiving the message know which message is theirs?

I’m assuming many messages were sent during the war … with all those messages bouncing around how did we zero on the one specifically for the receiver ?

In: Other

Answer 1

Morse was often sent by wire. You’re only ever sending one message on that wire, so there is no trouble there.

Now, morse could be sent by radio once radio became more accessible, but in world war 1 it was copper all the way. Sending morse over radio is also pretty easy – you just use a frequency that nobody else is. As transmitters got better, receivers could afford to be more selective, allowing more channels in the same bandwidth for even less competition.

Not long after that we got voice over radio and it was something of a moot point. Controlling frequencies is how we keep different signals from interfering to this day.