[kevingadd]

I would expect you can only transmit so fast in morse code given the need for the dots and dashes to be clearly distinguished from each other and identifiable by the recipient.

Of course, if you know both ends are computers you can just transmit in some other encoding at a much higher rate.

[CamperBob2]

The point is, Morse code is as many "bits per second" as you want. You could send Morse code at 10 gigabits per second if you wanted. It is not meaningful to say that Morse code implies a particular data rate.

Historically the metric for Morse code is words per minute. Morse is similar to a Huffman code where common letters are allocated fewer elements, so it's not very meaningful to talk about "bits per second" with respect to Morse even if you do specify the number of words per minute. The number of "bits" will vary based on the letters being transmitted.

[Tadpole9181]

Oh, come on, this is just being coy for no reason. Given the context, it is abundantly clear they mean "normal, human operated morse code".

A skilled operator is around 30 WPM. The average English word is 5 (rounded up) characters. Add one character for the space. That's 180 characters per minute, or 3 character per second. With 37 characters available in morse code, that's log_2(37) or 5.2 bits per charater.

So 15.6 bits per second. Just under half of the 39 bits they got for speech, like they said.

[Nevermark]

Yes, computers can transmit any language at any speed (if we include parallelism).

That wasn't contested.

[spinf97]

I mean if you want that level of pedantry "I" can't send Morse code at 10 gigabits per second. I can make a computer transmit it at that speed, but I am not personally sending it that rate. And, because one generally needs a machine to transmit Morse code, one cold argue that "I" never send Morse code ever.

[vvoid]

As Morse speeds up, you stop relying on individual dots and dashes and begin recognizing common combinations of letters. Faster still and you are mainly hearing word stems and suffixes.

The faster the information comes at you, the less important any particular bit is, because you have more context with which to autocorrect.

[selcuka]

> the dots and dashes to be clearly distinguished from each other

Yes, spaces are part of the morse code spec. It looks like a binary encoding but in fact it's ternary.

We can invent a 5-bit (or 6-bit, to include numbers and punctuation) morse-like code to avoid needing spaces.