the corner office : Memory

Memory

I just saw this post at Bob Congdon's site, and it reminded me of something pretty amazing from when I was down in Durban at Christmas.

Someone in the family received a message on a Nokia cell-phone, announced with the usual irritating beeps.

"Someone's got a message", says I. My gran, now in her 80's, says "someone got an SMS. Those beeps are morse code for SMS".

Which absolutely blew me away. My gran was a radio operator in WWII, and hasn't touched morse code in nearly 60 years. She suffered a mild stroke two years ago and her memory has had erratic spells since then, but I was completely gobsmacked.

I found this link which also discusses it: if you have a Nokia and your message alert is set to "Special", you'll get

. . . - - . . .

which true enough, spells "SMS".

{2004.02.20 00:32}

Comments:

1. Ed Brill (2004.02.20 - 01:13) #

You mean you didn't have to pass the morse code test to set up your weblog? Hrumph. My ham radio callsign is KA9TAW. I can probably still send and receive morse code at about 10 whole words per minute... which, with the Internet around, doesn't sound all that interesting.
. -.

2. Colin (2004.02.21 - 00:57) #

I think IRC became the ham radio of the 90s, and I could point to a serious IRC habit for a few years '96 onwards, but admittedly, I don't think IRC is going to help much if I'm trapped in a collapsed building one day.

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