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Morse Code still dashing through the Cordillera

By Desiree Caluza
Inquirer Northern Luzon
First Posted 04:17:00 12/23/2009

Filed Under: Technology (general), Computing & Information Technology,
mobile phones, Internet, Holidays or vacations

BAGUIO CITY—There is no mountain high enough to block a Christmas
greeting because highland communities that have no mobile telephone
signals can still be reached by Morse Code.

In this day and age, the Commission on Information and Communication
Technology (CICT) in the Cordillera Administrative Region is still
operating a telegraph
system that serves clients here.

Nothing beats the old technology, according to telegraph operators
working at the Baguio City Post Office, never mind that each word
transmitted costs a customer P2.40. (Mobile or landline telephone calls
cost P10 a minute.)

Customers who use the telegraph to send Christmas greetings use “broken English” to shorten their messages, rather like today’s text messages, according to samples obtained by the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Still profiting

Remarkably, the Baguio telegraph station still earns P3,000 a month,
said Aurea Bilag, acting chief operator at the CICT.

Bilag said the station’s profits used to reach P10,000 a month—until
almost every resident in the Cordillera acquired a mobile telephone.

But the highlands are not always hospitable to Internet satellite or
cellular phone signals, so the CICT continues to maintain 80 telegraph
stations in Benguet, Ifugao, Abra and Kalinga, said CICT operator Helen Damasco.

The telegraph machines were purchased way back in the 1960s but the
government has kept them working, Damasco said.

To facilitate communication among these towns when mobile telephones are inaccessible, local officials reach each other by Morse Code using these machines, she said.

According to Damasco, the machines are also active during typhoons, when
more sophisticated facilities fail to operate.

‘CW’ machines

This Christmas, the telegraph office offers straight holiday message
packages.

“Our Christmas telegrams are categorized [as] social telegrams,” Damasco said. She said they used to send out telegram cards as their special
Christmas message package, except that these had been phased out.

“Our visitors from Manila would see our [old technology] and they would laugh. And then they’d ask, ‘You still use CW (continuous wave) machines?’” she said.

Continuous wave is the most common medium for transmitting messages to telegraph stations by Morse Code—a sonic alphabet composed of dots
(shorts) and dashes (longs).

The code was named after its inventor, American artist Samuel Morse, who developed the first successful electric telegraph in 1838.

The telegraph offices in the mining town of Itogon in Benguet province
still use a World War II telegraph model called the “straight key,”
which is known in the United States as J-38.

Morse Code courses

Damasco, a telegraph operator for the past 39 years, said the telegram
began to descend into obscurity in the 1990s because of the mobile
phones and the Internet.

But vocational schools continue to keep Morse Code courses alive because
the demand for the telegram has not disappeared completely, she said.

“Other operators learn Morse Code from the Internet” or by enrolling in
the Telecommunication Training Institution in Valenzuela City in Metro
Manila, Damasco said.

Christmas card sales are also brisk, indicating that the postal service
remains busy during the Yuletide season. A Baguio bookstore has sold 200
cards daily in the run-up to Christmas Day.
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