A race to the wire as old hand at Morse code beats text messengers
From: Times Online - 04/16/2005
By: Mark Henderson

Dotty and old-fashioned means of communication can still be the best: Morse
code has seen off the challenge of the text message in a contest pitting the
best in 19th-century technology against its 21st-century successor. 

The race to transmit a simple message, staged by an Australian museum, was
won - at a dash - by a 93-year-old telegraph operator who tapped it out using
the simple system which was devised by Samuel Morse in 1832 and was the
mainstay of maritime communication up until 1997. 

Gordon Hill, who learnt to use the technique in 1927 when he joined the
Australian Post Office, easily defeated his 13-year-old rival, Brittany
Devlin, who was armed with a mobile phone and a rich vocabulary of text
message shorthand. Mr Hill, whose messages were transcribed by another
telegraph veteran, Jack Gibson, 82, then repeated the feat against three
other children and teenagers with mobile phones. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2-1571664,00.html

Contributed by Rich Simpson