InterestingFacts: S.O.S. Doesn't Actually Stand for Anything

 

S.O.S. Doesn't Actually Stand for Anything

After more than a century of use as a maritime distress signal, “SOS” has become shorthand for just about any emergency. You may have heard that it stands for “save our ship” or “save our souls,” but that’s actually a backronym, or an acronym made up after the fact. The letters in “SOS” didn’t initially stand for anything; they were originally chosen because they form a sequence of Morse code that can be transmitted more quickly than others.

Morse code (named for Samuel Morse) is a way of transmitting phrases with light flashes or electrical pulses; each letter and numeral has its own sequence of between one and five short bursts (known as “dots” or “dits”) and long bursts (“dashes” or “dahs”). In 1901, inventor Guglielmo Marconi created a radio transmitter that could send Morse code signals across the Atlantic, allowing ships to communicate with other vessels and land-based stations. British operators were already using “CQ,” or “seeking you,” as a signal to alert all stations, so Marconi’s wireless company recommended “CQD,” or “seeking you, distress,” as an emergency signal. Meanwhile, the United States usually used “NC,” the Germans used “SOE,” and Italians used “SSSDDD.” But the problem with all of these is they required brief pauses between the letters.

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