Morse Code was designed by Samuel Morse & Alfred Vail. It uses short electrical signals (dots) and long electrical signals (dashes) to represent letters & numbers. It was widely used throughout Europe and America in very early (mid 1800's) land-line communications and has continued to be used to the present in America for this form of Land-Line telegraphic communication in which the signals were carried across the land by wires supported by telegraph poles. Land-line communications use 'sounders' to allow the receiving operator to 'hear' the clicking sounds of the code and to translate them into letters.