The Blaine County Journal News-Opinion - We've Got The County Covered

Although the International Morse Code of …---… was chosen as the international distress signal by the nations who met at a maritime conference in the early 1900s, the sequence of three dots and three dashes followed by three more dots really isn’t supposed to stand for the three letters SOS. The code string was simply a unique signal that would transmit clearly and quickly via telegraph and wouldn’t be confused for other communications. Today, it is the universal signal to attract attention, signal distress, and ask for help.

In contemporary times, those three letters also abbrevi...