Morse Code to Binary Converter

Type a message to see it as Morse code written in 1s and 0s, where 1 means the signal is on and 0 means it's off. Or paste a string of 1s and 0s to decode it. To convert ordinary text to dots and dashes, use the main translator.

How Morse code becomes 1s and 0s

Morse has one strict timing rule, set out in the ITU's official standard, Recommendation M.1677-1. Everything is measured in the length of one dot:

Write each unit as one digit and any Morse message turns into a line of bits. This is the same scheme Wikipedia uses to show Morse timing.

Worked example: SOS

• S is ... so it's 10101
• O is --- so it's 11101110111
• Put 3 off-units between letters:

10101 000 11101110111 000 10101

Without the spaces that's 101010001110111011100010101. Paste that into the converter above and you'll get SOS back. More on the signal itself on our SOS page.

Is Morse code binary?

Sort of, but not really. It's a fair question, and the answer depends on what you mean.

Why it looks binary: Morse is sent with just two states, on and off. A flashlight is lit or dark, a tone is sounding or silent. That's why you can write it in 1s and 0s like the converter does.

Why it isn't: Computer binary is built from fixed-size chunks. In ASCII, every character is 7 bits, so A is always 1000001. Morse letters are all different lengths. E is one dot and J is a dot and three dashes. And the meaning comes from timing, not just on and off. When Claude Shannon laid out the basics of information theory in 1948, he described telegraphy as using four symbols: dot, dash, letter space and word space.

The gaps really do carry meaning. E (.) is the start of I (..), S (...) and plenty of other letters. Take away the letter gaps and ... could be S, EEE, EI or IE. So Morse isn't a clean two-symbol code. It's closer to three or four symbols sent with two states.

Morse code and data compression

Morse did get one thing right that computer scientists later made formal. The most common letters get the shortest codes. Alfred Vail worked out which letters were common by counting the type in a newspaper's print shop, so E and T got a single signal while Q and J got four.

That's the same idea behind Huffman coding, a compression method from 1952 that's still used in file formats today. Stanford's computer science course notes start their Huffman lesson with Morse code for exactly this reason. The difference is that Huffman codes never need gaps, because no code is ever the start of another one.

What replaced Morse in telegraph machines

Variable-length codes were awkward for machines to handle, so printing telegraphs moved to fixed-length codes. The first was the Baudot code, a 5-bit code from the 1870s. It led to the teleprinter codes that ASCII was later built on. The unit "baud" is named after Émile Baudot. For the machines that sent Morse, see Morse code machines.

Morse vs binary vs ASCII

Frequently asked questions

Is Morse code binary? Not exactly. It's sent with two states (on and off), but letters are different lengths and the gaps between signals carry meaning. It works more like a three- or four-symbol code.

How do you convert Morse code to binary? Write a dot as 1, a dash as 111, the gap inside a letter as 0, the gap between letters as 000, and the gap between words as 0000000. The converter above does this for you.

Can you convert binary numbers to Morse code? If you mean 1s and 0s written as text, you can send the digits themselves in Morse: 1 is .---- and 0 is -----. See Morse code numbers.

Is Morse code a Huffman code? No, but it uses the same idea: common letters get shorter codes. Huffman coding came about a century later.

Related: how Morse code works · Morse code numbers · Morse code keyboard · main translator