Morse Code in Tubular Bells (2021)

The potentially earliest written model of a telegraph actually involved bells as well. After the anonymous author (C.M) first suggestion of small pieces of paper with letters written on them jumping up, via static electricity to tiny electrified balls as the sender manually electrifies the wires, one for each letter, and then waits a bit to allow the slips of paper to flutter back down one by one as the remote observer diligently records what letters hit their balls in what order, he suggests the following, from Scots Magazine, 1753:

"If anybody should think this way tiresome, let him, instead of the balls, suspend a range of bells from the roof, equal in number to the letters the alphabet, gradually decreasing in size from the bell A to Z; and from the horizontal wires let there be another set reaching to the several bells; from the horizontal wire A to the bell A, another from the horizontal wire B to the bell B, etc. Then let him who begins the discourse bring the wires in contact with the barrel, as before; and the electric spark, breaking on bells of different size, will inform his correspondent by the sound what wires have been touched: and thus, by some practice, they may come to understand the language of the chimes in whole words, without being put to the trouble of noting down every letter."

The first documented successful message by wire was 20 years later although there was no independent observer. It took about 55 years from the time of this article until one was publicly demonstrated.

Many people claimed they were working on it, such as in this 1773 love letter by Genevan Physician named Louis Odier:

"I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling you that I have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into conversation with the emperor of Mogol, or of China, the English, the French, or any other people of Europe, in a way that, without inconveniencing yourself, you may intercommunicate all that you wish, at a distance of four or five thousand leagues in less than half an hour! Will that suffice you for glory. There is nothing more real. Whatever be the course of those experiments, they must necessarily lead to some grand discovery; but I have not the courage to undertake them this winter."

Communication at a distance was "time machine"/"fountain of youth" technology up until the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_alphabet was a mystical occult version from the 1600s.

Another British morse code in music story: in the title theme of the 1980s sitcom "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em", the rhythm of the notes is a deliberate morse code which spells out the title of the show.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Mothers_Do_%27Ave_%27Em#T...

What the Wikipedia page doesn't mention this, but I read long ago that the composer of the tune received only a small one-time payment for it and no royalties, despite the popularity of the show.

The article is about a studio device unintentionally picking up Morse code during recording. But that's not the only intersection between Mike Oldfield and Morse code. Oldfield also deliberately (and quite obviously, if you're listening for it) inserted into one of his later albums: a not-so-nice Morse code message[1] to Virgin Records founder Richard Branson, with whom he was at the time fighting over how he was being treated by the label and lack of promotion. At around the 48 minute mark of Amarok, you can hear a synthesizer loudly tap out "F U C K O F F R B" in the recording.

1: https://www.mikeoldfield.org/amarok

Here's what I hear:

    VVV GBR GBR GBR [BT] TL5 T [BT] VVV VVV VVV ...

[BT] here indicates a prosign [1] (-...-) this one is a kind of section or message divider.

VVV is often sent when testing your equipment, and I think that's what's happening here.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code

The transmission signal path on the first map also looks an awful lot like the album cover for Tubular Bells:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/Mike_oldfield...

Mike Oldfield has stated that the conditions at the Manor were so precarious at the time, he had to learn to use the tape recorder and mixer almost by himself because the engineer was never there. Since there were so many instruments on the recordings and the mixer was not automated, it took several people doing acrobatics to operate the faders and dials real-time to mix down the tracks for the album. Therefore possibly those Morse code signals were picked up because an instrument was not properly gain staged before being recorded.

"VVV" in Morse code means "attention, incoming message".

Cool to see amateur radio and fldigi in a Hacker News article.

> I used a lossless FLAC copy of the CD album from 2003 to see this. It’s quite possible a lot of this would be missing from lossy copies, such as MP3s, though I haven’t tested that.

Aren't music CDs already compressed using lossy compression? A FLAC copy of that uncompressed CD would be one generation away from the original, whereas an MP3 of the rip would be two generation removed from the original (i.e. still lossy, only more so)?

I guess I have to turn in my movie buff card, as I had always just assumed that this music was something composed specifically just for the movie.

> Tubular Bells was famously recorded at The Manor Studio

I think that's referenced in the 1983 Black Sabbath song "Trashed".

It really was a meeting

The bottle took a beating

The ladies of The Manor <---

Watched me climb into my car and

I was going down the track about a hundred and five

They had the stop-watch rolling

I had the headlights blazing I was really alive

And yet my mind was blowing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Again_(Black_Sabbath_albu...

I was listening to this decades ago, and saw the note on the cover that the album was recorded at The Manor, so I put that together.

Morse code is also deliberately in another Mike Oldfield album, Amarok. (Yes, the KDE music player is named after it.)

Oldfield was locked into a predatory Virgin Records contract written by Richard Branson (Tubular Bells was the first ever Virgin Records release) and he was increasingly irritated that Virgin was not promoting his albums.

He hid a message in Amarok and offered £1000 of his own money to anyone who could find it. The message is "FUCK OFF RB" in morse code.

Apparently, no-one claimed the prize.

A nearby VLF station was transmitting its 'GBR' callsign.

Radio pickup is a huge problem for audio electronics.

I used to live near someone with a CB radio, and the pitch of one of my synths would go up by a semitone when they were transmitting.

the transmission in the recording is actually VVV GBR