On December 12, 1901, Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi stood on a hill overlooking St. John's, Newfoundland, and received the first radio message ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean. That fateful message was just a few Morse pulses—the letter 'S', in fact—but it changed the face of the twentieth century. This month marks the 114th anniversary of Marconi's milestone, so we've asked Jeopardy!'s Ken Jennings to get on the air and clear the air about some of the most appalling misconceptions from radio's first century.
The Debunker: Was the Titanic the First Ship to Issue an "SOS"?
James Cameron's Titanic taught its fans two things. First, never trust Billy Zane. Second, the standard radio distress call in 1912 was not the familiar Morse SOS in use today. Cameron is careful to explain this little historical curio to his late-'90s, Hanson-listening audience.
CQD, sir?
CAPTAIN SMITH:
That's right. The distress call. (Looks at camera.)
CQD. (Does "Jim Halpert face.")
In movie theaters, the scene ended there. On the DVD, a deleted scene shows the wireless crew deciding to mix in the new-fangled distress signal SOS as well. "It may be our only chance to use it," one jokes.
That seems a little clunky too, but according to the eyewitness testimony of junior wireless officer Harold Bride, who survived the sinking, that's exactly what happened. CQD, from the French word sécurité (sécu = CQ) and "distress," had been the international Morse emergency signal since 1904, but it was too easy to mistake for "CQ," used for all general calls. So a 1906 conference adopted Germany's SOS code to replace it. But CQD was still widely in use when the Titanic sank, which explains why its radio crew tried both calls.
It's widely claimed that the Titanic was the first ship to use the new signal, but Snopes.com has done yeoman's work here, combing The New York Times's archive to find seven other maritime emergencies between 1909 and 1912 when an SOS was sent out. (The first two articles, charmingly, have to explain "SOS" to an ABBA-deprived readership still accustomed to CQD.) So SOS was still a recent development when Titanic sank, but not a brand-new one.
One other note: contrary to popular belief, neither CQD or SOS are acronyms. CQD does not stand for anything like "Come quick, danger" and SOS doesn't mean "Save our ship" or "Save our souls." Those are "backronyms"—phrases reverse-engineered to fit already existing letter combinations. SOS was chosen for one reason: its three-dot/three-dash/three-dot pattern was easy to tap out in a continuous sequence even by amateurs.
Quick Quiz: In sports, SOS is a statistic measuring the overall difficulty of a competitor's opponents. What does SOS stand for?
Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.