Lighthouses:
Use of morse code in lighthouses:
- It is a tower or other structure containing a bright light to warn or guide ships at sea.
- These are located at shorelines of oceans.
- Lighthouses are used to mark dangerous coastlines,hazardous reefs, and safe entries to harbors, that is light houses will acts as a warning signs.
- Lighthouses are to serve as a navigational aid and to warn boats of dangerous areas.
Facts about lighthouses:
- Lighthouses are painted differently to help mariners identify them during the day. For example, a lighthouse may be painted all white if its surroundings/background is dark. The red and white stripes help the mariner identify the lighthouse if it’s up against a white background, such as cliffs or rocks.
- Lighthouses in fairly close proximity to each other have different flash patterns to allow the mariner to identify their location. Some lighthouses in different geographical areas share the same flash patterns.
- Originally lighthouses were lit with open fires, only later progressing through candles, lanterns and electric lights.
- These days, lighthouses are run by machines and remote monitoring. The automatic sensors decide if there is extra moisture in the air, and if so turn on the fog signals. Radio signals are used to communicate with the ships. But when the technology was not so advanced the lighthouses were run by lighthouse keepers.
Morse code:
- Morse code is a code which is used for communication which contains series of dots and dashes to represent alphabets, numbers and symbols.
- Because lighthouses were often in very remote locations they usually had a light house keeper who lived near them to make sure they worked through the night.
- As there were no mobiles in olden days. At that time, if ship's captain want to make communicate with the lighthouse keeper they had to use morse code by flashing a light.Below is the message recorded by the light house keeper from a ship which is sinking.
- This is how the communication will be done between ship captain and lighthouse keeper.