[NN5I]

Right on, Flyer.

The code that we use nowadays, called Morse Code, is not the original telegrapher’s code. The code we use, more properly called Continental Code or sometimes Continental Morse, is composed of characters made up of combinations of two sound elements which are of disparate lengths. Dits and dahs are how they’re usually referred to, with a dit equaling one time unit and a dah equaling three units. The spacing between each element is a single unit while inter-character pauses consist of three -– and so on.

There was, and is still is in some places, an earlier code, similar in many ways to what we use now, called American Morse or Railroad Morse or sometimes Landline Morse because it was used in wire telegraphy. In American Morse, aside from the fact that clicking noises were used instead of tones, the spacing between sound elements was not always the same; some characters had longer spaces (equal to two dit-lengths) within them; and some even had extra-long dahs. Nor was the character set the same as in modern Morse.

One character that was represented in American Morse but is not included in our modern Continental Code is the character called ampersand, or &, which of course means and.

The American Morse for the ampersand was a dit followed by a two-dit-length space followed by three dits spaced one dit-length apart. It sounds a lot like ES sent in modern Continental Code with not quite enough space between the E and the S.

When you use ES as a ham radio abbreviation for and, you hearken back to the earliest origins of the hobby. Use it, and enjoy the historical perspective it gives you.

Incidentally, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, who is usually credited with having invented the Morse Code, invented only the concept of signaling by interrupting a current in a wire. The actual code was invented by one of Morse's assistants, Alfred Vail. Morse stole the credit!

The part Morse did invent, of course, was the greater of the two inventions.